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TSU lawmaker slams civil service salaries, bonuses

A Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) legislator yesterday said that the central government's employees are over-paid compared to their private sector counterparts, and he urged the Executive Yuan to adjust their salaries.

During a question-and-answer session with Cabinet members, TSU Legislator Cheng Cheng-lung (程振隆) said public servants are paid an average 7.56 times more than private-sector workers.

Cheng used the Central Deposit Insurance Corp's employees as an example. He said they have the highest average salary of government workers -- NT$1,615,795 -- including NT$514,106 in bonuses.

He said the averaged salary of employees at the Export-Import Bank of the Republic of China are the second highest, followed by state-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC), the Bank of Taiwan, the Taichung Harbor Bureau and the Keelung Harbor Bureau. He said export-import bank employees receive 7.04 times the salary of their private-sector counterparts, while CPC workers are paid 6.81 times more.

Cheng urged Premier Yu Shyi-kun to come up with measures to address the discrepancies.

In response, Minister of Justice Chen Ding-nan (陳定南) said that the salary and benefits enjoyed by public servants are safeguarded by law.

"Any measures to scrap their benefits and cut their salaries violate the trust protection principles' stipulated in the laws," Chen said.

The premier asked the Central Personnel Administration yesterday to review the salary discrepancies before coming up with supporting measures to address the issue. Late last month Yu vowed to implement a 3 percent raise for government employees.

Cheng also complained of unfairness in bonus distributions. For example, he said, tax officials could receive bonuses worth tens of thousands of dollars, unlike their colleagues.

He said that the legislature had scraped measures that rewarded tax officials who made an effort to recover unpaid taxes, but the Ministry of Finance appeared to have found a way to make up for those lost bonuses. He said bonuses for tax officials still average NT$5,000 per month.
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