Workforce Boost Needed To Accelerate Homebuilding in Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s Housing Minister has said his department needs to hire more private contractors to accelerate the building of affordable homes, after the city leader ramped up pressure on officials to address shortages. Secretary for Transport and Housing Frank Chan Fan on Thursday promised to move quickly with bolstering the workforce for the design and construction phases of public housing projects, in the hope of freeing up civil servants to focus on tasks such as monitoring and quality control. “If we could start tendering for projects by including design and construction as a single item it would allow us to also draw on private companies’ available resources and technology at the same time,” said Chan, also the Housing Authority chairman. “We need to improve our productivity, and the government could do so by increasing manpower, but we can also leverage the large power within the private sector, particularly within the construction sector.” Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor accused the authority – a statutory body in charge of building and managing public housing estates – of taking too long to deliver projects, forcing residents to wait years for a flat. She suggested the authority assume the burden of paying subsidies to about 90,000 households which had been queuing at least three years for public housing. The allowances, aimed at improving the livelihoods of low-income families, are currently disbursed by the government. The scheme for those on the long-term waiting list distributes HK$2,250 (US$1,860) a month to two-member households, with families of six or more getting HK$3,900. Lam said the authority bore responsibility for completing construction quickly once it was given the land, and was judged against the target of allocating homes to applicants within three years of them joining the waiting list. “The cash subsidies are currently paid by the government, but why shouldn’t they be [paid by] the Housing Authority? If you build the estates slowly, you will have to pay [more],” Lam said.