Lawmaker raises question of need for training funds

Privatization of professional training courses sparked a debate between the Cabinet and lawmakers yesterday.

KMT lawmaker Hsu Chung-hsiung (徐中雄) brought into question whether the subsidy to help private companies train employees should be renewed for next year.

The CLA launched the project last year to boost employment. The project subsidizes 35 percent of the expenditures for professional training courses. The project is justified as a means to encourage private enterprises to train and hire unemployed workers. Any company which recruits more than seven unemployed workers are entitled to apply for the subsidy.

According to CLA statistics, the project has provided assistance for the training of 12,388 unemployed. The report indicated that 99 percent of them remain employed as of November. This year, the project allocated NT$60 million to 93 companies. The CLA allocated NT$300 million to implement the project, and has budgeted NT$150 million for next year. Officials from the CLA, explained that the project is to assist local workers to upgrade their professional skills while different industries' professional technologies have been expanding very fast.

Hsu, however, argued that there has never been a mechanism to monitor whether those recruited workers are truly unemployed of if they were simply seeking to upgrade their own professional skills or even if the company had already intended to hire and train them without the subsidy.

Gui Cheng-quan (桂正權), official of the of the council's Employment and Vocational Training Administration, explained that they carefully followed whether these unemployed workers were actually hired after the training courses was completed over. But he did admit that they have now way to measure whether the workers were taking the training courses out of need or whether they were recruits.