Who pays for the National Travel Card? It is paid for by government subsidies. Where does the government get the money for these subsidies? It comes from overtime pay converted from unused annual leave, which many hard-working civil servants are too busy to take.
The government does not give civil servants the money it owes them because it wants to resuscitate the tourism industry, so it forces its workers to travel and spend money. They might want to use that money to buy things, to put their children through school and take care of their family. Is there something wrong with that?
What if they do not like traveling? If a private company were to replace overtime pay it owed its employees with a consumer card, regardless of its form, it would quickly be reported to the Ministry of Labor.
Knowing the law, but contravening it all the same seems to have become commonplace for government agencies, while the legislative and supervisory bodies often seem to be asleep.
Being forced to travel is extremely unreasonable, so civil servants are protesting. As a result, the government has gradually relaxed the restrictions on how the cards can be used.
Nowadays, they can also be used to buy clothes (you want to dress up a bit when you travel), cosmetics (you want to match your new clothes) and even electronics, some of which do not even have the slightest connection to travel.
It has essentially become a prepaid consumer card. How it this any different from paying them in cash?
The government is deceiving itself and others, stressing that this is a national “travel” card and that it can only be used on weekends, public holidays and during time off.
Meanwhile, when a civil servant takes time off, their overtime pay for unused time off is reduced.
The system only causes more trouble: The government issues a card to encourage civil servants who have not taken time off to travel, but is it not contradictory to encourage workers not to take time off and then to encourage them to travel, which would likely mean they have to apply for time off?
For civil servants who are too busy for a vacation, the government should simply pay them for days they work when they should have had time off. It should have no say in how they spend their money and it should not trick them into using a travel card, which is a travel card in name only.
That should not be a difficult policy and no one would incur losses. How would this leave anyone unhappy?
The government’s contract with banks for the perplexing travel card is to expire at the end of this year.
This is the perfect time to terminate the system once and for all.
Ku Ling is a writer.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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