In this paper we discuss the existence problem for a semi-cyclic holey group divisible design of type (n, m t ) with block size 3, which is denoted by a 3-SCHGDD of type (n, m t ). When n = 3, a 3-SCHGDD of type (3, m t ) is equivalent to a (3, mt; m)-cyclic holey difference matrix, denoted by a (3, mt; m)-CHDM.It is shown that there is a (3, mt; m)-CHDM if and only if (t − 1)m ≡ 0 (mod 2) and t ≥ 3 with the exception of m ≡ 0 (mod 2) and t = 3. When n ≥ 4, the case of t odd is considered. It is established that if t ≡ 1 (mod 2) and n ≥ 4, then there exists a 3-SCHGDD of type (n, m t ) if and only if t ≥ 3 and (t − 1)n(n − 1)m ≡ 0 (mod 6) with some possible exceptions of n = 6 and 8. The main results in this paper have been used to construct optimal two-dimensional optical orthogonal codes with weight 3 and different auto-and cross-correlation constraints by the authors recently.