Help young people, group says

The Taiwan Youth Rights and Welfare Advocacy Association put on a skit entitled ``What does the nation owe the young? Give basic rights to young people'' at a news conference yesterday to criticize the way government officials treat issues involving young people. PHOTO: CHEN TSE-MING, TAIPEI TIMES

Taiwan's people are a marginalized group, the Taiwan Youth Rights and Welfare Advocacy Association said on International Youth Day yesterday, calling on the government to focus on the development of the nation's youth, rather than on restricting them.

The government should strive toward four goals, the association said. First, it should ensure that local governments set aside 4 percent of their social welfare budgets for youth development. Second, the policy power of the Executive Yuan's Youth Affairs Advancement Committee should be enhanced. Third, the government should allocate special funding for the training of professionals in youth development. Fourth, it should support suffrage for youths aged 18 and above.

"The government says that benefits trickle down to the youth eventually through allocations to institutions like the education ministry. But we need to focus on the youth directly; if we do not invest in our youth now, there will be a greater social cost to pay later on," the association's deputy secretary-general Kao Cheng-yen (高正言) said.

The representation of young people in the central government is inadequate, the association said, urging the government to grant the Youth Affairs Advancement Committee, which was established last year, greater powers to implement policy decisions.

"The National Youth Commission will be disbanded eventually, and its focus has been on volunteer service. The Youth Affairs Advancement Committee so far has basically met every six months and hasn't taken much concrete action," youth affairs committee member Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) said.

The main problem is that youth policy is directed toward prevention, rather than development, the alliance said.

About of the youth budget is spent on welfare handouts for the underprivileged, while the other half is spent on preventive campaigns against smoking, drugs and others, the association's secretary-general Yeh Ta-hua (葉大華) said. "Very little money is actually being spent on youth development in areas such as career development for young adults or the protection of youth work rights," he said.