Wealthy residents in Beijing need a total of 100,000 highly skilled home helps but only 40,000 such workers are available, a seminar was told Tuesday.
A seminar on highly skilled home help was told on Tuesday that Beijing is in great need of workers who speak one or more foreign languages, know how to use a computer, drive a car and are good at managing private financial business.
There are nearly 1,000 companies offering such home help services in Beijing but they are too small to provide adequate training.
Experts told the seminar that the problem has caused inconvenience to some residents, including overseas businessmen and white collar employees living in Beijing.
Jia Liancheng, an executive with a local home help training center, said well-trained home helps from the Philippines have appeared in Shenzhen, a boomtown bordering Hong Kong, and Shanghai.
"We will lose a huge labor market unless something is done as soon as possible," he said.
His training center could offer advanced training to only 120 home helps so far due to a lack of skilled trainers.
An official with the Labor and Social Security Bureau of the Beijing municipal government told the seminar that Beijing is home to about 10,000 overseas-funded companies.
"There is a huge demand for highly-skilled home helps by the overseas white collar employees of the companies," the official said.
(Xinhua News Agency January 24, 2002)
