Govt Urged To Hire Tour Guides For Temporary Roles

Representatives of the tourism sector on Wednesday called on the government to hire unemployed workers in their industry for temporary positions, such as helpers at vaccination centres or guides at country parks.

Four associations under the Federation of Trade Unions say around 15,000 to 20,000 workers in the sector have become unemployed since the pandemic began. They say many are using up all their savings as well as subsidies the government provided them last year.

The chairwoman of the Hong Kong Industry Employees General Union, Sara Leung, urged the government to hire tour guides or other former workers in the industry to help with vaccination efforts.

Leung said vaccinating the city’s population would require a lot of manpower, and not everyone involved would need to be a medical professional.

She said former tourism sector workers could help give directions, provide general information to those getting inoculated, and assist in cleaning.

And instead of hiring former civil servants – who may well be enjoying their retirement benefits – Leung said the government could ease the city’s unemployment situation by giving tourism workers a way to make ends meet.

She said with their customer service skills, tourism workers will be able to get on with their new jobs quickly.

“If they are allowed to take up duties like crowd-control management, promotion, or simple customer service, they can take things up very easily… this could allow the government to save time and resources to train staff,” Leung said.

The chairwoman of the Hong Kong Professional Tourist Guides General Union, Ann Yu, said she hopes the Environmental Protection Department and the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department could hire tourism workers as environmental ambassadors.

She said they could provide information to hikers and users of country parks and make sure people would protect the environment and not leave behind rubbish.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Hong Kong Certified Tour Escort Association, Stephen Chan, said the government could recruit tourism workers to promote its scheme that encourages stores to install e-payment systems.

The government rolled out a scheme to provide a one-off HK$5,000 subsidy to retailers and restaurants in public housing estates to set up e-payment methods last October, so people would not need to pay using cash – which could help spread the virus.

But Chan said the scheme had received lukewarm support due to a lack of promotion and he urged the government to hire tourism workers on a temporary basis to promote it.