The Employees Retraining Board will enhance and upgrade its training and retraining services for the local labour force, including providing more comprehensive and diversified services.

The Labour & Welfare Bureau said today the Chief Executive-in-Council has endorsed the final recommendations on the board's future direction.

Welcoming the decision Secretary for Labour & Welfare Matthew Cheung said the board will better meet future challenges, especially in the face of the global financial turmoil, by improving the breadth and depth of its services to provide a flexible, quality and resilient labour force.

He noted it plans to offer at least 123,000 training places in 2009-10 and stands ready to provide an extra 20,000 places should the need arise, to meet the growing training and employment needs of its expanded target clientele amid an economic downturn.

With the wave of globalisation, the advent of a knowledge-based economy and rapid technological development, it is important for local workers to pursue life-long learning and cope with ongoing changes. Manpower development should therefore be the central perspective in the design of training, and sustainability the key to the board's service orientation.

To better reflect its new positioning the board rebranded its services under the Manpower Development Scheme last July and will continue to be market-driven and job-oriented to help the labour force, especially the less competitive workers.

It will revamp and improve its existing training courses, introduce new courses, incorporate elements of personal attributes enhancement into its training, and ensure its training courses gain recognition under the Qualifications Framework.

It also plans to launch skills upgrading courses for in-service workers of various industries to help them sustain employment. Placement-tied vocational training courses and vocational Chinese programmes for ethnic minorities have been introduced.

It is producing a programme prospectus in English and major ethnic minority languages. Training and employment support services will be enhanced in districts where most ethnic minorities live, such as Yau Ma Tei, Yuen Long and Sham Shui Po.