Restaurant barred from hiring non-local workers after providing false info in application

A restaurant has been barred from hiring non-local workers after it provided false information to the Labour Department in its application to bring in servers, junior cooks, and dishwashers.

The department served Waso Cafe in Prince Edward an administrative sanction and terminated the restaurant’s application under the Enhanced Supplementary Labour Scheme (ESLS), according to a Monday statement.

The programme was introduced in 2023 to alleviate the city’s manpower crunch, allowing for the hiring of non-local workers – most of them migrants from mainland China.

Following an investigation, the department established that Waso had “breached the requirements under the ESLS during the local recruitment exercise by providing false information” to the government, the Monday statement read.

“An administrative sanction is thus imposed,” a department spokesperson said.

“Employers applying for the importation of workers under the ESLS should strictly comply with the scheme requirements, including according priority to employing suitable local workers,” the statement said.

Under the import scheme, administrative sanctions such as the one served against Waso may also cause previous hiring approvals to be withdrawn, the statement said.

Tighter rules

Monday’s sanction came as the government in June tightened the rules for the non-local labour scheme targeting the food and beverage sector. Employers must now observe a stricter staffing ratio of three local employees for every imported worker.

Affected roles include cooks, junior cooks, waiters, receptionists, drink makers, and bar supervisors. Employers previously only needed to maintain a 2:1 ratio of full-time local to imported workers.

To protect the local workforce, employers are still required to pay imported labourers a wage no less than the median monthly salary for their respective positions.

As of May 2026, there are about 24,300 non-local workers employed in the food and beverage services sector, accounting for some 45 per cent of the 54,000 non-local workers in Hong Kong under the scheme. A total of 110,000 imported worker applications have been approved.

As of this March, the government has received more than 1,000 complaints regarding the scheme, some of which led to official sanctions.

For example, in August of last year, a Chinese restaurant was barred from hiring non-local workers for two years after authorities found that the company fired local employees to hire non-local workers.