City easing path to work permits for foreigners

The city plans to open service centers at district levels to help save legwork and queuing time for foreigners who need to apply for work permits to get legally employed in Shanghai.

The downtown Huangpu District's Employment Promotion Center yesterday started accepting work permit applications of foreign residents. One window at the center is now open for the foreign applicants

The service will accept foreign applicants whose employers are registered or located inside Huangpu District. This means they can avoid traveling to the only city-level center to go through the procedures.

The district offices usually have slacker traffic and applicants can expect shortened wait times compared to the city-level center, an official surnamed Ding with the Shanghai Human Resources and Social Security Bureau said yesterday.

"The scheme is to help divert traffic from the city-level center and offer bettered convenience for the foreign applicants. They can just find their nearest district center to complete the application steps," Ding said.

Officials said the same convenience will be offered soon by employment offices in the Pudong New Area and Xuhui, Jing'an, Minhang and Jiading districts.

The Huangpu District center is at 525 Nanchezhan Road. It can be reached by Metro lines 4 and 8 as well as No. 929, 66 and 771 buses.

People from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao applying for work permits are covered by the same application rules and can use the same service offices.

The city-level office, Shanghai Administrative Center for Employment of Foreigners, is at 77 Meiyuan Road in Zhabei District. The human resources hotline 12333 offers consultations.