Turkey has paid the salaries of 3 million employees to bail out firms amid the coronavirus lockdown, the country’s labor minister said Monday.
“WE SUPPORT OUR EMPLOYEES”
More than 268,000 firms applied for the short-term employment allowance, which the government announced earlier this month to cushion the fallout of the pandemic, Zehra Zumrut Selcuk tweeted. “We support our employees and employers by mobilizing all our resources,” she said.
She went on to say that 40 percent of the applications came from the manufacturing sector, 15 percent from retailers and wholesalers, 12 percent from hotels and food companies, 6 percent from the educational sector, and 27 percent from miscellaneous firms.
Any firm forced out of business due to a Force Majeure, such as the pandemic, can approach the government.
The government will also pay a daily allowance of 39.24 liras ($5.7) for a period of three months to workers forced to take unpaid leave.