The government and the now-defunct live poultry sector failed to reach a consensus yesterday during a meeting on the amount of the one-off payment that the government said it would pay, as officials insisted on giving each vendor 240,000 to 480,000 patacas, while the vendors asked for a payment of 2 million patacas each, Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM) President Jose Fonseca Tavares said yesterday.
The bureau announced late last month that the government decided to impose a permanent ban on the import and sale of live poultry in Macau from May 1.The local sale of live poultry had already been temporarily suspended since February 3, after the detection of the H7 virus in some local samples.
Apart from the one-off payment, the bureau announced early this month that it will also provide 14 million patacas for former live poultry vendors to use as severance payments for their employees. The bureau would also give each employee the equivalent of two months’ wages.
Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM) President Jose Fonseca Tavares speaks to reporters after yesterday’s closed-door meeting with representative of the now-defunct live poultry vendors at the bureau’s headquarters in Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro. Photo: Debby Seng
