Directly-elected lawmaker-cum-unionist Ella Lei Cheng I, who chairs the Legislative Assembly’s (AL) 1st Standing Committee, which is currently reviewing a government-initiated bill regulating local private tutorial centres, said yesterday that the government will allow people with criminal records that have been cleared to work in private tutorial centres, except for those with drug or sexual assault convictions.
However, addressing a press briefing after yesterday’s closed-door meeting reviewing the latest version of the private tutorial centre bill, Lei also said that those who committed a premeditated crime would not be allowed to work in private tutorial centres either.
Lei said that the previous version of the bill proposed that people employed by tutorial centres must not have been convicted of drug offences, sexual assault, domestic violence, crimes against life, or be sentenced to more than three years’ imprisonment for other offences, even if their criminal records had meanwhile been cleared.
According to Lei, the revision aims to promote convicts’ social rehabilitation, i.e., to facilitate their reintegration into civil society following imprisonment.
Lei said the revised bill proposes that long-term restrictions on private tutorial centres’ employment conditions are only meant for those who committed drug or sexual offences, as both are considered to be particularly serious.
Meanwhile, the bill also proposes that private tutorial centres can only operate in commercial buildings.
The bill is slated to come into force on April 1 next year, but there are transitional provisions so that tuition centres already in existence before can continue to operate, even if the premises where they are located are used for non-commercial purposes.
Lawmaker-cum-unionist Ella Lei Cheng I (left), who chairs the legislature’s First Standing Committee, talks to reporters after yesterday’s closed-door meeting of the committee reviewing the government’s bill regulating private tutorial centres, as the committee’s secretary, Becky Song Pek Kei, looks on. – Photo courtesy of TDM
