39
The city’s pool of foreign workers
has grown to huge proportions
T
he Government’s three-pronged package to restrict the
number of foreign workers coming to Macau has been
met with a mixed response.
and the administration has acted
Macau Business talked with an economist, an academic and a
to turn off the tap. Have they
representative from the construction field and each has strong
done enough - or too much views on the package and its consequences.
While at odds over the merits of the move, there is agree-
by Sofia Jesus
ment the impact of the policy - coming as it does at a time when
the sector is in cooling down period - will not be as big as it
would have been under normal circumstances.
There is also a broad feeling that restrictions will be tem-
porary.
Official statistics from June show there are 98,505 non-
resident workers in Macau – 13,713 of them in the construc-
tion sector. The huge numbers have led to a rise in social and
economic tensions and growing awareness that something had
to be done.
So, on October 3, Secretary for Economy and Finance,
Francis Tam, and Director of Labour Affairs, Shuen Ka Hung
did just that by announcing a package of restrictions which he
said were neccessary in view of wider economic conditions and
the need to maintain Macau’s low unemployment rate.
From the above date on, new applications to hire non-local
workers in the construction sector will not be accepted. Offi-
cials will also make a careful study of existing quotas in order
to gradually reduce the number of foreign workers in future.
Also starting on October 3, quotas were cut in half for
non-local workers in the cleaning, security and building admin-
istration sectors.
In the last of the measures, officials also announced that,
starting on January 1, 2009, new applications to hire non-local
workers for supervisory positions with the gaming operators
will not be accepted. The goal, they said, is to have all these
such positions filled by local workers during next year.
Market mimics
Economist Albano Martins has attacked the move to inter-
vene in the market, describing the package as “populist” and
significant in the run-up to next year’s elections.
His view is that populist measures can be “very dangerous”
and that this one leaves the core labour importation problem in
the hands of the next Macau SAR Government: “It’s not a clever
decision and it might scare off investors,’’ says Martins.
He also accuses the government of simply copying what
market forces would have achieved anyway because the con-
struction sector is in a “cooling-off’’ period and demand for
labour will slump naturally: “It’s like stealing an idea, doing
what would have happened anyway,’’ he adds.
According to official statistics shown to Macau Business
by Martins, in 2007 the area of land under construction was
more than 2.1 million square metres.
For the first two quarters of this year, the equivalent figure
was only 129,000 square metres. In 2007 the total area of build-
ings completed was more than 1.9 million square metres. In the
first two first quarters of 2008, the figure was a little more than
120,000.
Martins says wages in the construction sector are also go-
ing down – a 2.3 percent decrease when comparing the medium
daily salary in the second quarter (MOP557) to that of the first
december 2008
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