Britain to extend government furlough scheme till end of October

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak said that the scheme to pay wages of workers placed on leave because of the Covid-19 pandemic will be extended by four months.

Sunak confirmed that employees on leave will continue to receive 80 percent of their monthly wages up to £2,500 ($3,090).

The official said that the scheme will remain without any changes until the end of July, but sometime in the future employers will “start sharing the cost with the government of paying people's salaries.”

Sunak cited data saying that the job retention scheme has protected 7.5 million workers and nearly one million businesses across the country.

Set up in April, the job retention scheme allows employers to apply for grants to partially cover the wages of any employees they had to furlough because their businesses have been closed due to the nationwide lockdown.

Over the weekend, Prime Minister Boris Johnson proposed a gradual plan to relax quarantine restrictions, expressing hope that some primary schools could be reopened by June 1. A five-level ‘Covid Alert System’ was introduced to inform citizens about the varying degrees of restrictions in different areas.

Britain has had over 224,330 confirmed Covid-19 cases since the start of the outbreak, according to Johns Hopkins University, and nearly 32,150 people have died.

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