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.
DAREDEVIL: Honnold said it had always been a dream of his to climb Taipei 101, while a Netflix producer said the skyscraper was ‘a real icon of this country’ US climber Alex Honnold yesterday took on Taiwan’s tallest building, becoming the first person to scale Taipei 101 without a rope, harness or safety net. Hundreds of spectators gathered at the base of the 101-story skyscraper to watch Honnold, 40, embark on his daredevil feat, which was also broadcast live on Netflix. Dressed in a red T-shirt and yellow custom-made climbing shoes, Honnold swiftly moved up the southeast face of the glass and steel building. At one point, he stepped onto a platform midway up to wave down at fans and onlookers who were taking photos. People watching from inside
A Vietnamese migrant worker yesterday won NT$12 million (US$379,627) on a Lunar New Year scratch card in Kaohsiung as part of Taiwan Lottery Co’s (台灣彩券) “NT$12 Million Grand Fortune” (1200萬大吉利) game. The man was the first top-prize winner of the new game launched on Jan. 6 to mark the Lunar New Year. Three Vietnamese migrant workers visited a Taiwan Lottery shop on Xinyue Street in Kaohsiung’s Gangshan District (崗山), a store representative said. The player bought multiple tickets and, after winning nothing, held the final lottery ticket in one hand and rubbed the store’s statue of the Maitreya Buddha’s belly with the other,
‘NATO-PLUS’: ‘Our strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific are facing increasing aggression by the Chinese Communist Party,’ US Representative Rob Wittman said The US House of Representatives on Monday released its version of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes US$1.15 billion to support security cooperation with Taiwan. The omnibus act, covering US$1.2 trillion of spending, allocates US$1 billion for the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative, as well as US$150 million for the replacement of defense articles and reimbursement of defense services provided to Taiwan. The fund allocations were based on the US National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2026 that was passed by the US Congress last month and authorized up to US$1 billion to the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency in support of the
‘COMMITTED TO DETERRENCE’: Washington would stand by its allies, but it can only help as much as countries help themselves, Raymond Greene said The US is committed to deterrence in the first island chain, but it should not bear the burden alone, as “freedom is not free,” American Institute in Taiwan Director Raymond Greene said in a speech at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research’s “Strengthening Resilience: Defense as the Engine of Development” seminar in Taipei yesterday. In the speech, titled “Investing Together and a Secure and Prosperous Future,” Greene highlighted the contributions of US President Donald Trump’s administration to Taiwan’s defense efforts, including the establishment of supply chains for drones and autonomous systems, offers of security assistance and the expansion of
RSS