Almost three-quarters of the public thinks the nation’s pension system needs to be reformed, and almost as many like the idea of immediate reforms, a poll released yesterday by the Taiwan Style Foundation found.
The foundation said that 70.3 percent of respondents thought reforms were needed and 64.9 percent backed immediate reforms, while 14.1 percent of respondents said the pension system does not need to be reformed
Even more respondents (73.2 percent) voiced support for the government’s goal of “keeping the pension funds afloat for at least a generation,” while 63 percent said they agreed with the government’s aim to ensure a pension system that can afford stable and long-term payments, the foundation said.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Just about the same number (63.3 percent) said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has the resolve to carry out reforms, but 23 percent of respondents thought otherwise, the survey found.
The government’s proposal to raise the pension contributions of employees from 12 percent to 18 percent was supported by 54 percent of respondents, while 35.5 percent disagreed with the idea, and 61.8 percent backed a formula based on the average salary of the final 15 years of employment, while 22.1 percent disapproved, the foundation said.
Analyzing the results along occupational lines, 84.6 percent of public-sector employees — military personnel, civil servants and public-school teachers — and 70.8 percent of private-sector workers said the pension system needs to be revised.
Among public-sector employees, 53.8 percent support the phase-out of the 18 percent preferential interest rate on retired civil servants’ savings, but less than 50 percent supported a “pension ceiling” or increasing their pension contributions, the foundation said.
The survey found there is room for improvement in explaining the government’s proposals: 58.4 percent of respondent said they understood the reform plans, but 40.2 percent of respondents said they did not, and while 71.1 percent said they knew the pensions fund might go bankrupt between 2027 and 2031, only 42.9 percent knew that the government’s proposals would delay bankruptcy to between 2036 and 2044.
The survey found strong support for proposals to scrap job-specific pension privileges, with 79.3 percent of respondents supporting the cancelation of the 18 percent preferential interest rate and 79.4 percent backing adjusting the 13 percent interest rate for former employees of state-run banks.
When asked about retired civil servants who were able to count the time they worked as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials toward their total years in service, more than three-quarters (77.3 percent) of respondents supported such pension privileges, and 85.6 percent backed canceling the preferential interest rates for political appointees who served as civil servants, and 83.4 percent backed reducing the income replacement ratios for judicial officers.
“Contrary to what was thought to be massive objections to the government’s pension reform proposals, the survey found a mostly positive reaction, especially for potentially contentious issues such as raising pension contributions and the phase-out of preferential interest rates,” Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said.
“The survey indicates an emerging divergence among vested interest groups,” Citizen’s Congress Watch executive director Chen Chien-fu (陳建甫) said.
“Public-sector employees used to be seen as a unified group that could not be bent, but disagreements are beginning to surface within this group, especially along generational lines,” Chen said.
The government released its pension reform proposals on Thursday last week and the survey was conducted on Thursday and Friday.
A total of 1,018 valid samples were collected and the survey has a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 3.07 percentage points.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS