In his policy address in 2004, Edmund Ho, the then chief executive of the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR) government, formally inaugurated the era of workfare by declaring that:

… we will put resources to retrain the unemployed to make them more employable … To create the right social environment, we will put in place a workfare program. Some of the job opportunities [in this workfare program] will be created in the social service sector provided by social groups.