Gov't supports low-income families

June 5, 2020

The Working Family & Student Financial Assistance Agency will start disbursing a one-off special allowance under the Anti-epidemic Fund to Working Family Allowance (WFA) and Student Financial Assistance (SFA) households from June 9.

 

The arrangement is to relax the proposal of providing a time-limited cash allowance to the unemployed and the underemployed as announced by the Chief Executive in January.

 

Compared with the original proposal, each WFA and SFA household will receive a one-off special allowance, regardless of whether these low-income households are unemployed or underemployed.

 

For WFA households, a household which has submitted an application eventually approved from April 1, 2019, to February 21, 2020 will receive a special allowance equivalent to two months' WFA payment based on the highest monthly amount it received in its most recently submitted and approved application during the above period.

 

Households receiving means-tested SFA for pre-primary, primary and secondary students in the 2019-20 academic year will receive a special allowance of $4,640.

 

For households eligible for the special allowance under both the WFA and the SFA, the amount payable will be the higher amount of the above two cases.

 

The agency estimates that 58,000 WFA households and 145,000 SFA households will benefit from the special allowance.

 

It will disburse the special allowance based on the existing payment methods for the WFA or the SFA. Households are not required to make separate applications.

 

After disbursement, the agency will inform the households concerned by short message service (SMS) or letters.

 

WFA households can call 2558 3000 and SFA households 2802 2345 for enquiries.

 

Click here for details.

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