Care Worker Import Scheme Hong Kong: Quota and Ratios
SilverGuard Technologies Limited9 min read
The Special Scheme to Import Care Workers for Residential Care Homes opened on 19 June 2023, administered by the Social Welfare Department. A licensed home applies for a quota in a short window and must first prove it recruited locally. Private homes may import one care worker per local employee; subvented homes one per two. The quota ceiling is 15,000.
What the care worker import scheme is, and when it opened
The Special Scheme to Import Care Workers for Residential Care Homes is the route by which a licensed home in Hong Kong hires a care worker from outside the territory. The Government announced it in December 2022, introduced it to the sector on 18 May 2023, and it opened for quota applications on 19 June 2023. It is administered by the Contract Management Section of the Social Welfare Department, not by the Labour Department: from launch, applications to import care workers for residential care homes were moved out of the Supplementary Labour Scheme and into this one.
The design principle is stated on the department's own scheme page: on the premise of safeguarding the employment priority for local workers, the scheme allows homes to import care workers on an appropriate scale, relaxes the ratio between local employees and imported care workers, and shortens the approval process. Every substantive rule below follows from that premise. A home does not apply for permission to be short-staffed; it applies for a quota after demonstrating that it tried to hire locally and could not.
The scheme is not the only way a care home employs a non-local worker, but it is the one designed for the sector, and it is the one whose terms are published in a single booklet that is revised as the terms change. The current booklet is dated July 2026 and is the version worth reading alongside this note.
Which homes may apply, and the quota that caps them
Three categories of home may apply, and the licence is the test rather than the operator's legal form. Residential care homes for the elderly licensed under the Residential Care Homes (Elderly Persons) Ordinance (Cap. 459), residential care homes for persons with disabilities licensed under Cap. 613, and nursing homes holding a letter of exemption for a scheduled nursing home under the Private Healthcare Facilities Ordinance (Cap. 633) are all eligible. A home that has applied for a licence but does not hold one is not.
The quota is the constraint that shapes everything else. The scheme opened with a ceiling of 7,000 imported care workers, a figure that included the roughly 4,000 care workers already in Hong Kong under the Supplementary Labour Scheme, leaving about 3,000 new places; the Government confirmed that composition in a Legislative Council reply on 19 June 2024. In July 2024 the ceiling was raised by 8,000 to 15,000, as the department's July 2026 briefing for the sector records. Quotas are released in rounds rather than continuously: the department invites applications within a designated period of about two weeks, and the current round's dates are announced on the scheme page.
| Item | What the scheme sets |
|---|---|
| Opened | 19 June 2023 |
| Administered by | Contract Management Section, Social Welfare Department |
| Homes that may apply | RCHEs licensed under Cap. 459, RCHDs licensed under Cap. 613, nursing homes with a letter of exemption under Cap. 633 |
| Imported to local ratio, private and self-financing homes | 1 imported care worker for every full-time local employee, whatever the post |
| Imported to local ratio, subvented and contract homes | 1 imported care worker for every 2 full-time local employees |
| Local employees receiving disability allowance | Counted 1 to 1 against imported care workers |
| Quota ceiling | 15,000, raised from 7,000 in July 2024 |
| Contract length | Up to 24 months |
| Wage floor | Not lower than the median monthly wage of care workers |
| Levy | HK$400 per contract month, capped at 24 months |
| Quota approval | Around 2 months |
| Visa processing | Normally 6 weeks |
Two features of that table are easy to miss. The first is that the ratio counts full-time local employees regardless of post, so a home's clerical and ancillary headcount helps it qualify; the second is that the ratio is a ceiling on imports, not a staffing standard. Meeting the ratio does not mean the home has met Schedule 1 of the Regulation, and failing to meet Schedule 1 is not cured by holding a quota.
The local recruitment test a home must pass first
Before a quota is granted, the home has to prove that it tried. The department's requirement, set out in the scheme booklet, is that recruitment must have been conducted within the 30 days preceding the application date, either through the Labour Department's Interactive Employment Service website or through two recruitment advertisements in local newspapers or on recruitment websites, for a continuous period of 14 calendar days.
The advertisement itself is regulated as well as the duration. There must be no unreasonable job requirements that are restrictive or excessive, such as age, sex or skills, and the wages offered to local care workers must not be lower than those offered to the imported workers. The home submits a confirmation form on local recruitment and the underlying records: interview arrangements, successful hires, and the reasons applicants declined an offer.
In practice this is the stage where applications fail. The department states that an application missing required information or documents will not be processed until they are supplied, that late submissions are not accepted, and that where two complete applications arrive on the same day a computer randomly orders them. It also states plainly that a compliant application is not an automatic approval, and that the number of quotas granted may be fewer than the number applied for. The approving body is an interdepartmental liaison group chaired by the Director of Social Welfare, with representatives of the Labour and Welfare Bureau, the department and the Labour Department, working on a first-come-first-served basis.
Wages, contract length and the terms the standard contract fixes
The employment terms are not negotiated from scratch. An imported care worker is employed on the Standard Employment Contract (form SWD-ICW-16), and the contract term runs to the period in the quota details attached to the Notice of Quota Approval, with 24 months as the longest. Before the contract is signed, the worker must be medically examined at the employer's expense as to fitness for the work, and must produce the certificate to the employer.
On pay, the rule has two limbs and both are tested at different stages. The wage offered to imported care workers must not be lower than the latest median monthly wage of care workers compiled by the Census and Statistics Department, and the department's scheme page records that figure as HK$15,500 a month, based on 9 normal working hours a day excluding meal breaks. Local care workers must be paid no less than the imported ones. A home that offers below the median is refused a quota, and the Immigration Department applies the same floor when it considers the visa.
The remaining obligations are operational and they are checked by inspection of records: wages paid by autotransfer into the worker's Hong Kong bank account, a monthly pay statement, no deduction for recruitment fees owed in the place of origin, no payment back to the employer, no more than 12 hours of work in any consecutive 24-hour period including overtime, and overtime paid at the contract rate. The employer provides accommodation meeting the standard in the contract schedule and may deduct the lower of the actual accommodation cost or 10 per cent of wages excluding overtime — raised to a cap of 20 per cent for quotas approved on or after 3 July 2026. Medical treatment must be free to the worker, and travel and visa fees fall on the employer. Each worker must be given paid leave to attend the Labour Department's briefing within 8 weeks of arrival.
From quota to visa: the route, the levy and the processing time
A granted quota is not a visa, and it expires if it is not used. The employer must arrange for each prospective worker to submit a visa or entry permit application to the Immigration Department within the period specified in the Notice of Quota Approval; if no application is made in that period the quota lapses. The worker completes form ID 1028A and the employer form ID 1028B, and the Immigration Department's page on the scheme states that processing normally takes six weeks once all documents are received.
The entry conditions are narrow by design. Imported care workers may not bring dependants, and the scheme's arrangements do not apply to nationals of Afghanistan, Cuba, Laos, Korea (Democratic People's Republic of), Nepal and Vietnam. The worker must remain under the direct employment of the same home, in the post and at the place specified, with no transfer to another home, post or scope of duties. On completion of the contract the worker returns to the place of origin; if the contract is terminated early, stay is permitted only until two weeks after termination or until the limit of stay expires, whichever is earlier.
Two payments fall due before the visa is issued. The employer pays the Employees Retraining Levy of HK$400 multiplied by the number of months in the contract, capped at 24 months, in one lump sum, and it is not refundable. For workers recruited from the mainland, the hiring must run through a labour service enterprise approved by the Ministry of Commerce and permitted to operate labour service cooperation with Hong Kong. If a worker cannot come or cannot complete the contract, the employer may apply for a replacement within 7 days, and in general a quota is replaced once.
When the staffing ratio still cannot be met after importing
Importing does not suspend the statutory minimum, and the arithmetic is unforgiving because the minimum is a headcount on duty at a point in time. Under Schedule 1 to the Regulation, reproduced as Table 1 in the Code of Practice, a care and attention home must have 1 care worker on duty for every 20 residents for 10 hours within its approved specific hours, and 2 staff members on duty from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. A 100-bed home therefore needs 5 care workers on duty across those 10 hours, not 5 on the payroll: the row counts who is on duty at the time.
That distinction is why a quota alone rarely closes the gap. The quota is capped by the number of full-time local employees, so a home with 40 full-time local staff may import at most 40 care workers if it is private, or 20 if it is subvented — and those numbers have to cover leavers, leave and the night rows as well as the day ratio. The Regulation's definition of a care worker turns on what the person does, not where they were recruited, so an imported care worker rendering personal care counts in the care worker row like anyone else. What the scheme changes is the supply of people, not the number who must be on duty.
In practice the answer to a persistent shortfall is a combination: relief cover for leave, a roster built around the approved specific hours rather than around the contract hours staff would prefer, and technology that covers the intervals a roster cannot. Steadicore is the monitoring system our team builds, and it is not a substitute for a headcount: neither the Regulation nor the Code provides for a lower minimum because a home has installed equipment. What it can do is hold a watch between rounds and leave a timestamped record of an event and the response to it, which is the part of the night the roster does not reach.
Explore more
- The care home staffing ratio in Hong Kong : the Schedule 1 minimums the quota is meant to help a home meet.
- Health worker registration in Hong Kong : an imported care worker is not a health worker, and the two posts are counted differently.
- The care home Code of Practice in Hong Kong : the document that reproduces Schedule 1 and sets the records an inspection reads.
- SilverGuard Insights : our other notes on running a Hong Kong care home.
- Steadicore : the monitoring system we build, described in its own terms.
- Sanospark : the training side of the family, for staff who do the rounds.
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