Hong Kong is set to import as many as 20,000 construction and transport workers to ease manpower shortages in the industries. The plan was announced just hours after the Chief Executive sought to try to reassure Hong Kong workers that it would not overly affect their interests or wages. Kelly Yu reports:

Trade unionist lawmaker, Lam Chun-sing, says he is unsure why the government needs to use a new labour importation scheme to bring in thousands of construction and transport workers. Lam, who is the chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong and Kowloon Labour Unions, expressed concern that more schemes that bypass current vetting would be established for other industries in future. He spoke to Elvis Yu:

An analyst says the government's latest labour importation scheme is critically important to address a severe manpower shortage. But Roy Ying, co-chair of the advocacy and policy research committee at the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management, says it is only a short-term fix and is not a cost-saving measure. He also questioned how the government would attract people from the Greater Bay Area to Hong Kong, and deal with potential bottlenecks in testing and training the new labour. He spoke to Vicky Wong:

The Secretary for Housing, Winnie Ho, has announced a pilot scheme to speed up subsidised housing supply by tapping into market forces. As Ada Au reports, the scheme involves inviting private developers to build flats on government sites and also attracting them to rezone their own land banks for building subsidised flats:

The head of research at New World Development, Wendy Hong, says she does not expect the government's pilot scheme for private developers to build subsidised housing will have much impact on short term supply. The lawmaker, who sits on Legco's housing panel, says some private developers are willing to try innovative building models to help boost the supply of affordable housing. The Housing Secretary said the flats would be sold at a 35 percent discount to the market price, with the discount being taken into account in the land premium. But Hong told Ada Au that the administration may need to diversify the discount rate to attract developers to join the scheme:

Chief Executive John Lee says his government has an obligation and a duty to safeguard national security "preventively". He made the comment in his media briefing ahead of the weekly Executive Council meeting, during which he also dismissed the notion that the resumption of a part of the Hong Kong Golf Club in Fanling for housing, would have any impact on its ability to stage international tournaments in future. Violet Wong reports:

Chief Justice Andrew Cheung has described the plagiarising acts of a High Court judge as unacceptable, and the Court of Appeal has ordered a retrial of the case involved. Vanessa Cheng reports:

The Executive Council has endorsed civil service pay increases that were unchanged from its proposals a week ago. The plan now goes to the Legislative Council for approval, as Altis Wong reports:

Wednesday is World Blood Donor Day and the Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service has been appealing to the public to give blood. That is despite the fact that Hong Kong's blood stocks have returned to normal after being severely depleted during the Covid pandemic. The chief executive and medical director of the transfusion service, Dr Lee Cheuk-kwong, told Natale Ching that maintaining a good supply was vital:

DAB lawmaker Vincent Cheng says he is 'looking forward' to the launch of the government's new system to booking leisure and sports venues. The system, SmartPLAY, will accept registrations from July 3 and is expected to be launched in October. Cheng said the old system was not user-friendly, had received many complaints and had been open to abuse from touters - who would book venues and then sell them on to users at an inflated price. Cheng told Ben Tse that SmartPLAY would save time and labour:

The nation's central bank has lowered a key short-term lending rate for the first time in 10 months. The People's Bank of China cut its seven-day reverse repo rate to 1.9 percent from 2 percent - in the process providing cash that banks can then lend out to boost the economy. Robert Kemp reports: