Minister to call crisis meeting to solve Sing Pao pay row
The labour minister will call for an interdepartmental meeting to look into ways to get the Sing Pao Daily News to settle HK$3 million in unpaid wages and Mandatory Provident Fund contributions.
But lawyers and relevant parties said that would be no easy task as officials had said the Chinese-language newspaper had practically exhausted its means to pay money it owes more than 100 former employees.
Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung Kin-chung promised 20 former workers - led by Federation of Trade Unions lawmaker Chan Yuen-han - at a meeting yesterday that he would soon organise a meeting with the Department of Justice, the Labour Department and the Mandatory Provident Fund Authority to discuss the matter, a bureau spokeswoman said.
The workers' representative, Li Wai-man, demanded on Tuesday that the Department of Justice help them obtain an injunction to stop publication of the daily paper, arguing that Sing Pao had been spending HK$80,000 a day to print the newspaper instead of using the money to pay them back. But solicitor Simon Ip Shing-hing said successfully making that argument would be difficult.
'You need to prove that the company has a criminal intent to swindle money from its staff and that allowing the paper to continue its production would lead to irreversible damage to the workers,' he said.
'Even if the judge granted the injunction, the workers must bear the risk of paying whatever loss Sing Pao might incur during the course of the injunction should they lose.'
Police are investigating the former employees' allegations of fraud against the company.
The Mandatory Provident Fund Authority tried various tactics - including freezing the paper's accounts and sending bailiffs to its office to collect MPF contributions the court ordered the paper to pay - but still failed to obtain the entire amount.
A source said the authority had been battling Sing Pao over its assets but found it hard to trace the money.
Sing Pao said last night it would soon announce news on restructuring its finances that would show its 'determination to keep publishing'.
