It's a responsible move by the SAR government to start evaluating different ways - including the potential import of labor - to cope with the manpower shortage problem faced by certain sectors in the city. But extra care should be taken to safeguard the interests of local workers in deciding to bring in overseas workers.

Claims by the business sector that the labor shortage is taking its toll on certain sectors like construction and catering, and the concerns of labor organizations which worry their interests will be compromised by increasing the number of imported workers, should be heeded and addressed.

Official statistics indicating there are more than 80,000 job vacancies in the private sector as of the first quarter, and a relatively low jobless rate of 3.4 percent in May, may validate the business sector's claims.

But attention should be paid to the fact that the labor shortage seen in the city is largely attributable to a mismatch between supply and demand in terms of skills, regional mismatch, preference mismatch and information mismatch, with barely any shortfall in overall manpower supply.

To evaluate the manpower situation in the medium term, the Hong Kong government has been conducting the Manpower Projection (MP) since 1989, publishing six rounds of findings in 1990, 1992, 1994, 2000, 2003 and 2012. The findings of the first five indicate no shortfall in overall manpower supply. Only the last one projects a slight shortfall of around 14,000 in overall manpower supply by 2018, which is minimal compared with a labor force of 3.85 million today.

It's a prudent move for the government to deploy further efforts to tackle the mismatch problem before making any decision to import overseas workers.

Labor import will be warranted when such efforts fail to solve the mismatch problem, leaving the city no other way to meet the business sector's demand for staff, provided that appropriate measures can be included in the process to sufficiently protect the interests of local workers.

Labor import is regarded as a politically sensitive issue and additional caution must be exercised in making any decision lest Hong Kong society risks falling apart.

The author is a current affairs commentator.

(HK Edition 07/18/2013 page1)