Hong Kong firms have applied to bring in more than 3,000 people to work as waiters in the last couple of months and almost the same number again for jobs as cooks, the government said on Wednesday.

With a ban on importing labour for 26 types of jobs temporarily lifted, businesses have also asked to be allowed to recruit more than 1,000 sales assistants and over 900 security guards from outside the SAR, figures provided to Legco showed.

Companies also told the Labour Department that they need hundreds of people to come to Hong Kong to work as cleaners.

Labour Secretary Chris Sun told Legco that by the end of October, there were more than 1,100 applications seeking to bring in a total of 12,745 people under the Enhanced Supplementary Labour Scheme which was launched in early September.

“The government is highly concerned about the supply and demand of manpower in Hong Kong… the government will continue to adopt a multi-pronged strategy, including promoting training and retraining, providing appropriate employment support services and driving technology adoption for productivity uplifting, etc., so as to address the manpower shortage problem,” he said in a statement.