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City seeks money missing from Rebar pension fund

The Taipei City Government's Department of Labor Affairs yesterday was still searching for NT$450 million (US$13 million) that is missing from China Rebar Co's (中國力霸) labor pension account.

In addition to discovering that the account at the Central Trust of China had a balance of just NT$650,000, department officials also learned that members of the pension account examination committee were appointed by the company, rather than employee representatives, and that the committee had not checked the account for more than a year.

"With little money left in the account, no one in the company will be able to receive a full retirement pension," commissioner of the department Su Ying-kuei (蘇盈貴) said yesterday at city hall.

After the department failed to find out what had happened to the money, Su said the department had handed the case over to the Taipei District Prosecutor's Office for further investigation.

In an effort to protect the livelihoods of more than 10,000 employees in a total of 25 Rebar Asia Pacific Group (力霸亞太企業集團) companies that are located in Taipei City, the department began to review the companies' pension accounts on Tuesday, and found that a total of NT$450 million had disappeared from Rebar China's pension account. The pension account of another of the group's companies, Chia Hsin Food and Synthetic Fiber Co (嘉新食品化纖), had a balance of just NT$24,000.

"The situation is pretty bad, and we are worried that the companies may not be able to pay salaries," Su added.

After a visit to China Rebar, Su said the company's general manager Wang Lin-mei (王令楣) had promised to pay salaries on Jan. 20 as scheduled.

Su said the department would watch closely to see if Wang carried out her promise.

When asked whether the department had examined the company's pension funds before, Su said that the department had never previously examined its accounts, but added that the group's financial problems were not the sole responsibility of the city government.

"Companies that are located in Taipei accounted for only 10 percent of the group, and our department takes the initiative in doing our best to protect employees' rights," Su said. "This issue involved many local governments and the central government as well."

Council of Labor Affairs Vice Chairman Kuo Foung-yu (郭芳煜) said yesterday that despite the small amounts left in the pension accounts of China Rebar and Chia-hsin, they seemed to have stayed within the bounds of the law.

"They have been making the bare minimum monthly payments of 2 percent of the employees' wages into the funds," he added, "and there's no evidence of impropriety in terms of recent withdrawals from the account."

When asked whether it would be possible for employees to take their retirement money out of Rebar now, Kuo replied that they would first need to fulfill the conditions for retirement.

"What's important to employees right now is keeping their jobs," he said.

Company officials at Rebar Asia Pacific Group and Chia Hsin Food and Synthetic Fiber Co claimed that they are not in charge of the pension fund accounts and thus have no idea of where the money went, the Chinese-language Central News Agency reported, citing Lee Chin-hsiang (李金祥), associate manager of Rebar Group's human resource division, and Kuo Li-li (郭立力), acting president of Chia Hsin.

Additional reporting by Angelica Oung

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