A human resources analyst, Roy Ying, says the labour importation programme still faces a number of hurdles, even though many workers will be able to travel to Hong Kong on a daily basis thanks to the improved infrastructure, thereby reducing the need for housing.

On Tuesday the government announced plans to import 20,000 construction and transport workers to ease manpower shortages in those two sectors.

Speaking on RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme, Ying, who is the co-chair of the advocacy and policy research committee at the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management, said many of the jobs still required local training.

"Some of the workers need to be locally qualified, such as maybe crane operators, rebar fixing, minibus drivers," Ying said. "These are things that need testing and training."

Ying said, as there were potentially thousands of people who need to be trained, this could create a bottleneck.