Hong Kong launches a new round of employment protection plan of HK$43 billion to benefit 1.74 million migrant workers

　　China News Agency, Hong Kong, April 25 (Reporter Han Xingtong) Law Zhiguang, director of the Bureau of Labor and Welfare of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, held a press conference on the 25th to announce the details of the "2022 Employment Guarantee" plan.

He said that the new round of plans is expected to have a total financial commitment of about 43 billion yuan (Hong Kong dollars, the same below), which will benefit 1.74 million migrant workers.

Applications will be accepted for the program from April 29 for two weeks, with applications closing on May 12, with the first batch of grants expected to be released in early May.

　　Luo Zhiguang pointed out in his opening speech that since January this year, social distancing measures, which have been greatly tightened to curb the fifth wave of the epidemic, have hit companies in many industries hard, and the number of unemployed has also risen.

Therefore, the SAR government announced earlier that it will launch a new round of "2022 Employment Support" plan under the "Anti-epidemic Fund" to provide employers with wage subsidies for three months, that is, in May, June and July this year.

　　Luo Zhiguang revealed that the SAR government has received a lot of opinions on the relevant plan, and most of the improvement suggestions have been incorporated into the optimization arrangement, including the cancellation of the originally proposed monthly salary cap of 30,000 yuan for eligible employees, and no longer rigidly requiring employers to use the "2020 Employment Guarantee" plan. The data is used as the upper limit of the number of eligible employees, etc.

　　He said that the optimized "2022 Job Support" plan will benefit about 1.6 million employees and about 140,000 self-employed persons. About 43 billion yuan.

　　Law pointed out that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose to 5.0% in January-March 2022, and he believes the unemployment rate for February-April to be announced next month will still rise.

However, he also believes that in terms of the current job market and the overall situation, the peak period of unemployment should actually be over.

　　Luo Zhiguang expressed the hope that the new round of plans will give employers more flexibility, better protect the interests of employees, and make better use of public funds to achieve the policy effect of "supporting enterprises" and "protecting employment".

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