A Government spokesman today (July 17) said that the Employment Support Scheme (ESS) Secretariat has approved the sixth batch of applications for wage subsidies and will commence next week the disbursement of wage subsidies to about 12 000 successful employer applicants, with subsidies totalling about $4.7 billion and a total committed headcount of paid employees of about 200 000. The Secretariat will publish the name list of the employers concerned upon the completion of the disbursement. 

       Together with the first five batches of employers who received wage subsidies, the ESS Secretariat has disbursed wage subsidies totaling $34.2 billion to nearly 121 500 employers in the six batches, with a total committed headcount of paid employees of more than 1.47 million. After excluding 12 000 ineligible applicants who have not been approved for wage subsidies, the ESS Secretariat has completed processing nearly 80 per cent of the applications received from employers. 

       The spokesman said, "The processing agent of the ESS will continue to process the remaining some 35 000 and 14 000 applications respectively from employers and self-employed persons (SEPs) and has, via emails, reminded employers who have yet to provide correct bank and/or MPF account information to submit the supplementary information as soon as possible in order to complete the processing of applications under the first tranche of the ESS. Nonetheless, about 14 600 of such employers have yet to submit the required information. Since the processing agent and the ESS Secretariat will commence in full stream preparatory work for the second tranche of the ESS in early August, the ESS Secretariat therefore reminds these relevant employers that, they must submit to the processing agent the required information on or before July 31. The ESS Secretariat will, starting from early next week, remind each of these employers of the above deadline via SMS and email."

       In addition, the Secretariat will disburse the $7,500 one-off subsidy to the sixth batch of about 3 900 SEPs, totaling $29 million. Together with the first five batches of the SEPs, the ESS has disbursed the one-off lump sum subsidy to 90 000 SEPs.

Ends/Friday, July 17, 2020
Issued at HKT 17:41

NNNN