Employers will get the wage subsidies through the Employment Support Scheme by mid-September, the Secretary for Labour and Welfare Law Chi-kwong said today. Two leading supermarket chains and large-scale estate management firms will have to undertake extra commitments, he said. Large-scale estate management companies will also have to give back 80 percent of the subsidies they got from the government to tenants, which can be in the form of waiving tenant management fees. "In terms of employee numbers, small-and-medium enterprises have 370,000 employees, while large firms employ 558,000," Law said. "It will affect a lot of workers if the large firms decide to lay off their employees.''

Source: The Standard August 18, 2020 09:00 UTC