GGRAsia – Macau ops say paid leave if staff take relatives for jabs

Macau ops say paid leave if staff take relatives for jabs

Mar 01, 2022 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

Three Macau casino companies have publicised respective paid-leave offers for workers that take elderly or child relatives for Covid-19 vaccinations in the city.

Melco Resorts and Entertainment Ltd, MGM China Holdings Ltd, and Wynn Macau Ltd have all announced allowances of up to three days of paid leave for staff that make the effort. The move comes as the city’s government seeks to increase the jab take-up rate among the old and young, and get the already double-jabbed to get a third, booster, shot.

The authorities’ publicity has coincided with Covid-19 mass-testing after detected infections, in the Chinese mainland’s Guangdong province, next door to Macau.

As of Monday, Macau had recorded 378,467 people as having two doses of Covid-19 vaccine, according to data that day from the city’s Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Centre. That tally was only about 55.5 percent of a local population amounting to 682,300.

As of Monday, 113,254 individuals had received a third dose of Covid-19 vaccine.

MGM China and Wynn Macau Ltd said respectively that the special-leave incentive was applicable to staff whose family members are getting either a first, second, or third dose of Covid-19 vaccine in Macau.

Wynn Macau Ltd added its scheme would run from March 7, to June 30.

The “up to three days of additional leave” would enable staffers to “accompany their children or senior family members when they receive the vaccine and to care for them afterwards,” said Wynn Macau Ltd, adding the offer applied to those helping relatives either under 18, or aged 65 or over. The company claimed a “close to 95 percent” vaccination rate for its own workforce.

MGM China cited in its Tuesday release Pansy Ho Chiu King, its co-chairperson, saying the firm’s staff-vaccination rate had “exceeded 95 percent”, and its staff-leave initiative was to enable those workers “to extend” such level of “protection and care” to their other family members.

Melco Resorts, which made its leave scheme announcement on Saturday, claimed in November a nearly-95-percent staff-vaccination rate.

A number of casino operators had earlier in the pandemic crisis offered varied incentives for their own workers to get jabbed.

Macau’s Chief Executive, Ho Iat Seng, mentioned to local media on Friday that Macau’s Covid-19 vaccination rate was still “relatively low” among those aged “above 50″, and among those between “three to 18 years old”. He wasn’t quoted as mentioning percentages in relation to those age groups.

But he was quoted saying Macau’s vaccination rate for those in the age range 18 to 50 was approximately 95 percent, which was “very good”.