Secretary for Labour & Welfare Dr Law Chi-kwong today said about 156,000 of the 259,860 applications for the $7,500 subsidy for self-employed people under the Employment Support Scheme were not approved.

Answering lawmakers’ questions, Dr Law said the main reason for rejecting these applications is that the applicants failed to meet the eligibility criteria.

He explained that some applications were submitted based on an employee Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) account or a personal account created after the termination of previous self-employment instead of a dedicated self-employed person MPF account.

Some applications were also turned down because the self-employed person MPF accounts had already been terminated on or before March 31.

There were also cases where information provided by applicants regarding their self-employed person MPF accounts were not consistent with the records kept by the MPF trustees.

Dr Law said the Government is reviewing the experiences and arrangements of the first tranche of the scheme and expects to announce application details of the second tranche in mid-August.

The Government is considering allowing about 100,000 self-employed people who fulfil the eligibility criteria but did not apply for the one-off lump-sum subsidy under the first tranche of the scheme to apply, he added.