With the ending of furlough today (September 30) some sectors are still operating with various restrictions, not least the travel industry, one of the hardest hit sectors in the pandemic and are now calling on the NI Executive to help retain sector jobs.
Chairman of ANITA, Damian Murphy said: “As we all know, Furlough was introduced to help businesses who were operating with restrictions imposed on them by government due to the current pandemic.
“Furlough ends today, 30 September, and our industry is still very much curtailed by government travel restrictions. It would only have been fair that some sort of furlough extension or in its place a support package for our sector should have been implemented.
“Right through the pandemic we have been unable to fully utilise furlough as we had to have staff working to deal with refunds and the rebooking of many holidays, which in itself was a lengthy process.
“Many agents are struggling to bring all staff back full time and very few could afford redundancy payments so reduced hours seem to be the order of the day. Most of us are busier now than we have been but a high percentage of what we are doing is for next year and beyond which of course means to income for now.
“Our Executive are well aware of our situation and I would call on our first and Deputy First Minister and the Executive office to bring forward a further support package to help us survive the coming months. When we get beyond that hopefully we will all be out of the woods.”
