Employment plan gets public support

The majority of the public support the government's NT$70 billion temporary job-creation project, which they believe will help middle-aged and senior citizens find work, a 1111 Job Bank (1111人力銀行) survey showed yesterday.

"Over 58 percent of the survey's respondents welcomed the government's job offering at a meager monthly pay of NT$17,000 to NT$22,000," the job bank's spokesman Wayne Shiah (夏瑋) said yesterday at a press conference.

But many respondents thought the plan was a short-term fix and would leave people back in the same predicament next year.

The Job Bank's online survey was conducted from Dec. 23 to Dec. 30 and polled 3,162 valid respondents.

According to the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, about 522,000 people (or 5.22 percent of the total) were out of work in November. Among them, some 300,000 people are middle-aged and senior citizens, Shiah said.

One former construction worker who asked to be identified only by his surname Huang, said he found the Cabinet's measures useless.

"I won't apply for the government jobs since I am over qualified."

The Cabinet proposed the job-creation project last week, which aims to reduce the nation's unemployment rate from the current 5.22 percent to 4.5 percent by creating 115,000 part-time jobs in public construction and the government's service sector. Legislative approval is stll needed.

Job Bank's survey also showed that about 57 percent of those surveyed agreed with the government's plan to raise the public debt to fund the measure, while 37 percent of respondents called the massive expenditure a waste of money, saying the NT$70 billion price tag may financially burden future generations, Shiah said.

The survey indicated that 35 percent of respondents will apply for the government jobs if they are qualified while 18 percent may consider the openings and 28 percent refused to take such low paying work.

Much of Taiwan's population have never experienced unemployment problems before the nation went into recession in the middle of 2001, and often prefer to remain jobless rather than do menial labor.

Giving her support to the project, KMT lawmaker Wang Yu-ting (王昱婷) yesterday urged the Cabinet to come up with support measures for the project, including training programs to upgrade worker skills so that they may later find jobs themselves.

"[After on-the-job training], we hope that they may be qualified for jobs in the service sector in the near future, for example, working as tour guides in their hometown," Wang said.

Echoing Wang's view, Shiah said that those over 35 that take the government's low-end jobs are likely to be traditional labor laid off from withering traditional industries.

Shiah said the Job Bank, for example, has some 82,000 job openings available, but most positions are seeking well-educated talent under 35 years of age for high-tech industries.

"There's a structural gap between job supply and demand in the nation's talent pool," Shiah said.

Laborors over the age of 40 have only a 2 percent chance of finding a job at present, he said.

DPP Legislators Wang Sing-nan (王幸男) and Chiu Yeong-jen (邱永仁), nevertheless, are in favor of the Cabinet's short-term measures, saying "the project will greatly alleviate worsening unemployment in southern Taiwan."

Shiah believes that over 70 percent of the Cabinet's 115,000 job offerings would be filled following the slower-than-expected economic recovery last year.