The Housing Authority's Tender Committee has endorsed enhancements to tender assessment and the contract monitoring mechanism, aimed at screening out bids with unreasonably low wages and low man-power input.

The new mechanism will be implemented next month.

Service contracts of all types, including those directly managed by the department or through sub-contractors issued and managed by management agents, will be covered.

Average wage level to rise

Deputy Director of Housing Lau Kai-hung said the measures will bring up the average wage level of the cleansing workers in public housing estates to that published by the Census & Statistics Department.

Under the new mechanism, the effective weighting allocated to committed wages and related items will be increased from the existing 4% for property services contract and 6% for the department's directly managed contract to 17.5% and 18% respectively.

A new item on "committed total man-hour input" will be introduced. Tenderers are required to make a commitment on input resources as measured by the number of man-hours allocated to the cleansing service being tendered. Low committed input will attract low scores to discourage contractors from using too thin resources for the services.

The new mechanism will adopt the practice of bench-marking the tendered wages against the average monthly salaries figures published by the Census & Statistics Department, and the average committed wages of all the returned tenders in the same tendering exercise.

A sectional pass mark will be introduced for the scores on wages and related items to screen out bids with unreasonably low wages and low manpower input. Tenders falling below this threshold will not be considered.

Daily working hours kept to 10

A mechanism will be devised to encourage tenderers to keep staff working hours to 10 hours a day on average over a 10-day period. The number of part-time workers will be capped at no more than three-eighths of the total work force.

To further protect the workers' interest, the department will require all contractors of outsourced public rental housing estates to enter into written employment contracts with workers and to specify the committed wages, working hours and overtime payment. Contractors are also required to use autopay service and crossed cheques for salary payment to facilitate auditing.

Once malpractices are discovered, the department will take enforcement action, like issuing warnings and deducting service payment. Cases will be referred to other departments for legal action if necessary.

Mr Lau said with improvements in workers' wages, overall service in public housing estates will be enhanced.