Social Enterprises 'on Brink Of Collapse' Seek Aid

Dozens of social enterprises in Hong Kong are in danger of closing down by the end of the year, a group warned on Friday, unless the government steps in to offer financial support.

The General Chamber of Social Enterprises says a survey of 128 businesses it conducted last month shows around 80 percent have been losing money during the pandemic.

Twenty-eight percent of social enterprises polled say earnings are down by more than half, while almost one in ten have had zero earnings. A quarter say unless things change, they'll likely have to close down for good by the end of the year.

The group's chairman Andy Ng said social enterprises – which put solving social problems as their primary goal – are finding it harder to survive than normal businesses because they tend to be smaller in scale and have weaker balance sheets.

“Quite a number of our social enterprises,” he sad, “they hire disabled persons, and usually they don't want to – or it could be the last resort that – they will say lay off these disabled persons or disadvantaged people or underprivileged people.”

He said many of these businesses have already resorted to cutting business hours to reduce costs to avoid layoffs.

Ng urged the government to give HK$80,000 to each of Hong Kong’s 600-odd social enterprises in a one-off payment to help them survive the pandemic.

One of the groups struck hard by the pandemic is the Arsenal Football Development Centre, which provides football coaching to children from low-income families.

A director with the centre, Goldbert Chi Chiu, said they’ve received no income at all for the past eight months, since the government had closed all sports facilities and football pitches in the early stages of the pandemic.

He said while some coaches are still coaching over Zoom, about 60 percent of the ones employed at his centre have since switched jobs and are now working as taxi drivers or waiters to earn a living.

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