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Government urged to do more for nation's young

Members of the Alliance for Promoting Youth Rights and Welfare demonstrate outside the Legislative Yuan yesterday to protest the proposed merging of the National Youth Commission and Children's Bureau into a new department for social and family services. PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES

The draft of the organic law of the Executive Yuan (行政院組織法) should include specific institutions for the development of children and young people, in order to take care of the different needs of these two groups, youth-rights advocates said yesterday.

"The government needs to focus on the development of the youth, rather than directing youth policy toward prevention," said Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容), director of the Taiwan Youth Rights and Welfare Advocacy Association.

To push the government to invest more in the youth, the association invited children, youth-rights groups and legislators to discuss possible solutions for what the association called fragmented and marginalized welfare plans for young people on the eve of Youth Day, today, which used to be a national holiday.

At yesterday's press conference, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Ming-hsien (李明憲) said that youth rights would be ignored if the draft law is passed.

"Under the draft, the National Youth Commission and Children's Bureau of the Ministry of the Interior [MOI] will be merged. "It will be difficult to cover youth-rights issues with such a big institution, which has to deal with other issues at the same time," Lee said.

The draft bill calls for merging the commission and the bureau into the department of social affairs and family services under a to be formed ministry of health and social security.

According to the draft, the new department is designed to address issues including family policies, children and youth welfare services and protection measures and healthcare services.

DPP Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) said the draft would oversimplify the complicated issues affecting children, young people and even women's groups by establishing one institution to handle the concerns of varying groups.

"While children need more protection and care from their families, we should also focus more on youth development, such as career development for young adults or the protection of youth work rights," Cheng said.

Student representatives from several universities also criticized the linking of youth policies with family issues.

"Youth issues are totally different from and should be independent of family policies. What this group [youth] needs is more money for their development, rather than being treated as some kind of problem their families and society need to resolve," said Wu Cheng-che (吳政哲), a Da Yeh University sophomore who is studying human resources and public relations.

As the convener for the APEC Youth Camp held by the National Youth Committee last year, Wu has participated in many activities or volunteer services aimed at providing young people with opportunities to contribute to society.

"Although we don't have voting rights, we are the future of this country and are always willing to do something for society," the student said.

"I am disappointed with the government for failing to invest in the development of young people," he said.

"The government says that benefits trickle down to the youth eventually through allocations to institutions such as the Ministry of Education," the association's deputy secretary-general, Kao Cheng-yen (高正言), said.

"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," Kao said.

The draft law is still awaiting review and passage by the Legislative Yuan.
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