The Secretary for Labour and Welfare (SLW) will move a proposed resolution in the Legislative Council to amend the Protection of Wages on Insolvency Ordinance (PWIO). The proposed resolution will increase the ceilings for wages in arrears, wages in lieu of notice, severance, untaken statutory holidays and untaken leave, under the PWIO.
The Institute welcomes the proposal as it has, for some time, been urging SLW to review and increase the relevant ceilings under the PWIO, in particular the limits on wages in arrears and wages in lieu of notice, which had not been reviewed for over 20 years. As the Institute’s then president wrote in a letter to SLW in April 2020, the Protection of Wages on Insolvency Fund has always been a vital source of early payments for workers who are made unemployed due to the failure and winding up of their employers, and who have not received their full entitlements. Employees often rely on ex-gratia payments from the Fund to help tide them over periods of unemployment. Given the increases in unemployment over the past two years, this had become an even more important issue.
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