Vaccination under Employment Ordinance repealed

The Labor Department announced that it will be repealing the provisions relating to COVID-19 vaccination under the Employment Ordinance (EO).

“Starting today, there is no longer any provision under the EO relating to vaccination requests. Any such request made under the EO prior to this date ceases to have an effect,” a department spokesman said in their statement issued yesterday, 16 June.

The Employment (Amendment) Ordinance 2022 (Amendment Ordinance) took effect on 17 June 2022.

As mentioned in last year’s press release entitled “Employment (Amendment) Ordinance 2022 gazetted and takes effect today”,
the Amendment Ordinance aims at strengthening the protection of the employment rights and benefits of employees when they are absent from work due to their compliance with specific anti-epidemic requirements and encouraging employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccination.

The Amendment Ordinance has previously stipulated the conditions that needed to be met if an employer makes a COVID-19 vaccination request to his/her employee.

It was also stated in a press release that based on the said ordinance, “If an employee is dismissed due to non-compliance with such request, the dismissal will not be considered as unreasonable dismissal.”

The ordinance to repeal COVID-19 vaccination was earlier announced by the HK Gov on 12 April of this year.

For inquiries, please call the LD’s 24-hour inquiry hotline 2717 1771 (the hotline is handled by 1823).