A Government spokesman said today (June 25) that the Employment Support Scheme (ESS) received a total of 259 860 applications for the one-off lump-sum subsidy of $7,500 for self-employed persons (SEPs) during the application period. Of these, about 140 000 applications have not been approved due to ineligibility. The ESS Secretariat or the processing agent are sending notifications to these applicants.
Under the ESS, the applicant must have enrolled himself or herself in a Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) Scheme as an SEP and the relevant SEP MPF account should have been set up on or before March 31, 2020 (i.e. it cannot be backdated to that date or any earlier date) and had not been terminated as of March 31, 2020. According to the information provided by the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority, there are about 215 000 SEPs who are eligible for the one-off lump-sum subsidy.
"Applications for one-off lump-sum subsidy are denied mostly because they were based on an employee MPF account or a personal account created after termination of previous self-employment instead of a dedicated SEP MPF account, or the relevant SEP MPF accounts had already been terminated as of March 31, 2020. Should there be any enquiries about the application results, applicants may send email to subsidy@employmentsupport.hk within 14 days from the date of receipt of the notification from the ESS secretariat or the processing agent. " the spokesman said.
The ESS Secretariat has completed processing about 74 000 applications for one-off lump-sum subsidy and notified successful SEP applicants. The total sum involved is about 560 million. We are expeditiously processing some 40 000 remaining applications.
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