ERB chairman Ng Tat-lun faces big problems of increasing training service demand and corporate finance after assuming office on April 1 this year.

Amid the global economic tsunami and rising unemployment, the number of people seeking retraining services has surged quickly, said ERB chairman Dr. Ng Tat-lun.

In February and March this year, the number of applicants for retraining services rose to over 15,800 and 17,300, respectively, from the monthly average of 8,000 before the flareup of the global financial crisis last year.

If the rising trend continues, Ng believes the number of available training places will be inadequate and the ERB might have to ask the government for further financial resources to increase number of training places.

The number of applicants is surging as the impact of the financial tsunami continue to affect Hong Kong adversely, he said. The ERB will monitor the trend closely to see if there is a need to increase the number of training places. In fact, it has increased the training places to at least 123,000 places in the 2009-2010 financial year, a substantial increase from 87,000 places in 2007-08.

As a contingency plan, the ERB has a standby quota of 20,000. "If the 143,000 training places are still not enough, we do not rule out the possibility of seeking further government funding and increasing the number of training places," he said.

For many years, the ERB has a rule that training organizations must ensure that 80 percent of their trainees should find jobs within three months after completing relevant training. If only a small number of trainees found jobs, it would show that concerned training courses did meet the needs of employers and the market.

But with global recession still plaguing Hong Kong, some training organizations have asked the ERB to relax the 80 percent rule.

The ERB will be more flexible with the rule, Ng said. The board will also approve training courses in a more cautious manner by not approving more than enough training courses with saturated market needs.

He further said the ERB faces another big difficulty in its finances after the government's decision to freeze for five years the HK$400 monthly levy on employers of foreign domestic helpers. The levy is a major source of funding for the board.

"At the end of January, we had HK$4.84 billion in our books. Given our annual operational expenditure is over HK$1 billion, our reserves will be sufficient to sustain our operations for five years only," he said.

(HK Edition 06/12/2009 page4)