Hong Kong migrant employee teams on Saturday criticised plans to make coronavirus vaccines obligatory for all international home helpers, labelling the transfer “discriminatory and unjust”.
Health officials said they were planning to roll out mandatory inoculations for the 370,000 domestic helpers in the city, mostly poorly-paid women from the Philippines and Indonesia.
Those wanting to apply for work visas — or renew their current ones — would need to show they had been vaccinated, officials said Friday.
If the plan goes ahead it would be the first time Hong Kong has directly tied working rights for foreigners to vaccines.
“This is clearly an act of discrimination and stigmatisation against migrant domestic workers,” Dolores Balladares Pelaez, chair of United Filipinos in Hong Kong, instructed reporters.
Labour teams representing home staff mentioned they had been angered different foreigners — and locals working in environments reminiscent of care houses — weren’t additionally required to get vaccinated.
“Again, we’re being singled out and focused,” Pelaez added.
Health officials announced the vaccination plan after two domestic helpers were found to be infected with one of the more virulent strains of the coronavirus.
All domestic workers have also been ordered to get tested over the coming days — a measure that did not extend to the families they work for.
Officials said domestic workers were deemed “high risk” each as a result of they enter from abroad and sometimes collect outside in giant numbers on Sundays — their at some point off within the week.
They additionally are likely to deal with aged and weak individuals.
Hong Kong labour secretary Law Chi-kwong defended linking home employee visas to vaccination.
“Of course they’ll select to not work in Hong Kong as they don’t seem to be Hong Kong residents,” Law said.
Eni Lestari, chair of the International Migrants Alliance, described such comments as “unfair and shocking”.
“A whole lot of employers additionally don’t get vaccinated due to well being, private and even political causes, in order that they received’t pressure their staff to be vaccinated,” she told AFP.
Migrant groups also pointed out that wealthier foreign migrants — such as the city’s white-collar financial workers — are not being forced to get vaccines.
Wealthy Hong Kong has secured ample vaccine doses but there is hesitancy to take them.
So far just 12 percent of the city’s 7.5 million people have received one or more doses, a long way from the 60-70 percent needed for herd immunity.
Thanks to strict quarantine measures and economically painful social distancing rules, the city has kept infections to just over 11,000.
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