Solidarity Budget: 75% of Local Workers’ Salaries to be Paid by the Government

After the Circuit Breaker measures were announced on Friday, bosses all over Singapore frowned collectively—closure for a month?

What’s going to happen to the rental? The manpower? The bills? The daily operating expenses that come in every day that we employees would never understand?

Well, in today’s Solidarity Budget, a third help package is being announced to help businesses, because let’s face it: we’re all glad to be staying at home but we’re afraid that we’d lose our jobs and stay home forever.

And boy is it a bigly help, though employees might not feel the difference.

Here are the details that your boss needs to know.

Government to Help Businesses Pay Their Employees More

The entire Solidarity Budget cost the Government a staggering $5.1 billion, with $4 billion from past reserves (approved by the President liao lah of course) and $1.1 billion from the fiscal space of this term of Government.

And if you add all the help packages together, the total amount that Ah Gong is now spending just to fight the economic impact COVID-19 has caused would be a total of $59.9 billion (Unity at $6.4 billion and Resilience at $48.4 billion).

No wonder everyone’s saying that Singapore’s wealthy, because we’re talking about $59,900,000,000. Imagine how many cups of bubble tea you can buy with this amount.

Of the new budget, $4 billion is used to support workers and businesses.

Before today, the Government is paying 25% of all Singapore employees’ full-time salaries for all sectors; in some sectors, the rebate is much higher.

However, for the month of April, the Government would be paying a whopping 75% of all Singapore employees’ full-time pay for the first $4,600.

That will affect 1.9 million local workers.

So if you’re a local employee, a bulk of your pay is actually paid by the Government.

But of course, the question is: when?

After all, supporting businesses after a year for today’s employee doesn’t help at all and is just lip service.

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Well, the authorities have heard the complaint: the first payout for this scheme, called Jobs Support Scheme, would be handed out next week instead of in May.

If your company is on GIRO or PayNow, they’ll receive the first payout by next week, so that they can pay you in time lah.

But that’s for local employees; how about foreign workers?

Foreign Worker Levy Waived for April

For a start, foreign worker levy will be waived for the month of April.

Also, there would be a rebate of $750 each work permit or S Pass holder—that’s based on previous levies paid this year. And as usual, rebate will be sent early—as early as 21 April 2020.

So if your boss hasn’t registered for GIRO or PayNow, call him or her or it to do so now.

In other words, the authorities are working to make sure that during April, when most businesses are closed, the Government’s trying to soften the blow by paying for local workers’ pay and foreign workers’ levy.

And yes, it’s going to come fastly.

If you want to read about how this latest support package will affect you as an individual in simple English, check out this article.