The Employment Support Scheme Secretariat today published the list of the second batch of employers who have received wage subsidies under the second tranche of the scheme.

The list covers more than 80,000 employers with wage subsidies totalling about $10.9 billion to maintain a total paid headcount of over 450,000.

The secretariat has also notified the fourth batch of close to 10,000 employers of their successful application for the scheme’s second tranche, with subsidies totalling about $5.1 billion and close to 226,000 in total committed headcount of paid employees.

These applicants should confirm acceptance through the enquiry portal within two days of the notification such that the secretariat may arrange for an earlier disbursement of wage subsidies.

Taking into account the fourth batch of employers, the scheme has approved wage subsidies to a total of about 135,000 employers under the second tranche, with subsidies totalling almost $37 billion and a total committed headcount of paid employees of about 1.56 million.

Among them, about 21,000 employers have not fulfilled one or two undertakings of the first tranche of the scheme.

They either failed to fully use the subsidy amount received on paying wages to employees in June and/or July or they could not maintain the number of paid employees in the respective months.

About 97% of them had less than their committed headcount of paid employees in June and/or July. About three-quarters of them had a reduction in headcount involving one or two employees.

The Government will claw back the unspent amount and request the employer to pay a penalty. The amount involved is about $280 million which is equivalent to 0.8% of the total amount of wage subsidies under four batches of the second tranche. The amount will be deducted from the relevant employers’ second tranche subsidies.

The secretariat has completed processing close to 87% of the employers’ applications for the second tranche, and it will process the remaining 21,000 applications as soon as possible.

The Government said if employers receiving the second tranche of wage subsidies made redundancies in their respective companies during the subsidy period and the secretariat considers that the magnitude of redundancies is substantial, and the employers fail to prove their intention to hire new employees to replace those being laid off or re-employ those who have been laid off, or there are no reasonable explanations provided for the redundancies made, the Government reserves the right to claw back the second tranche of wage subsidies disbursed to the employers in full or in part.

Meanwhile, the secretariat has approved the $7,500 one-off lump sum subsidy to a total of about 10,000 self-employed people, involving a total subsidy of $75 million.