Residents who have been receiving unemployment insurance benefits since after March 25 are eligible for the $500 Hawaii Restaurant Card, which will be registered in their name and mailed directly to them in the coming weeks, said Sherry Menor McNamara, president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii.

The card is preloaded, nontransferable and works like any other debit card, though it can only be used in Hawaii restaurants. The program will run from Oct. 20 to Dec. 15, and residents will have until 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 15 to spend the balance. There is no need to apply.

“We recognize that this is not the only solution, and that is why it’s even more critical that we continue to work with the public and private sector to come up with collaborative solutions,” Menor McNamara said during the governor’s news conference Wednesday afternoon. “We also recognize the challenges that businesses are facing and that they are all in a defining moment.”

While several local restaurants across Maui have been forced to fold amid plummeting sales, others have seen the Oct. 15 launch date of the state’s pre-travel testing program as a chance to revitalize their business. Many have announced reopenings in recent weeks and have started cleaning and reorganizing their dining rooms to host customers once more.

“Our restaurants and our food service supply chain has been hit hard by the pandemic, and the Hawaii Restaurant Card will provide a huge boost to an industry that is desperately in need,” said Denise Hayashi Yamaguchi, executive director of the Hawaii Agricultural Foundation. “This announcement is being made today because we want our restaurants as well as their suppliers, including the food service wholesalers and distributors and our farmers, ranchers and fishermen, to be ready for the mid-October launch.”

Hayashi Yamaguchi encouraged restaurants to create their own offers and promotions around the card.

The program will be covered by $75 million in coronavirus relief funds. Gov. David Ige said the state plans to “use every penny” of its federal relief funding. Any remaining money at the end of the year will be placed in the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund and used to repay the more than $1 billion loan doled out for unemployment.

Of the more than $10 billion in federal funds awarded to Hawaii through various federal acts, about $3.9 billion has gone to small business and industry through programs like paycheck protection and food assistance, according to the Hawaii Data Collaborative. About $3.6 billion has gone to individuals, including the $600 weekly unemployment “plus up” and the state’s Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program for independent contractors and gig workers.

More than $175 million went to the Neighbor Island counties, including $66.6 million to Maui County.

But the federal funding does not solve the state’s long-term budget woes, and Ige acknowledged that he is looking toward furloughs with a projected $2.5 billion less in revenues over the next 18 months.

Hawaii News Now reported last week that the governor was proposing furloughs for state employees that would amount to a 10 percent pay cut and remain in place for four years. The governor skirted a question seeking more details Wednesday, saying that he was working with the unions, and “I don’t intend to change my policy of not negotiating changes through the media.”

As residents continue to struggle to get unemployment benefits, the state announced that it had launched a virtual call center at noon Wednesday to help people get more information on their claims. The call center will operate from 7:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Current numbers used by the local unemployment insurance offices and existing toll-free numbers will route to the new virtual center.

Backed by $4.92 million in coronavirus relief funds, the call center will be staffed by 200 agents trained to handle unemployment insurance claims. Another 100 adjudicators will be coming on board in mid-October to sort out some of the tougher claims and separation issues, said Anne Perreira-Eustaquio, director of the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.

When asked how effective she thought the call center would be given the challenges residents have faced so far in reaching the unemployment office and getting paid, Perreira-Eustaquio said she was “quite confident that the call center will be a great asset.” She said that all of the supervisors are experienced with unemployment insurance and that 40 percent of them will be local people trained by these experienced individuals.

In response to concerns about the agents working from other states and being trained by Maximus Inc., a Mainland contractor, Perreira-Eustaquio said that the company has done the same work in 13 other states and that unemployment insurance is a difficult program to navigate.

“These agents will not only just pick up a call and say, ‘Someone will give you a call back, I’ll take a message,’ ” she said. “They’re actually going to be out there looking at their claims, seeing what’s wrong with those claims and be able to clean them up so they can either be paid or they can move through the next step.”

Toll-free numbers for the call center are (833) 901-2272 and (833) 901-2275 and respectively correspond to the local numbers (808) 762-5751 and (808) 762-5752.

For more information about unemployment insurance, visit labor.hawaii.gov/covid-19-labor-faqs/.

* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.