Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬) complained yesterday that former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan's (連戰) monthly pension as a retired vice president is bigger than President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) salary.
"He [Lien] now earns a monthly paycheck [pension] of NT$470,000 [US$13,952] as a retired vice president, which is more than the president's monthly paycheck. Is that reasonable?" said Gao, who is secretary-general of the DPP's Justice Alliance.
Both the pan-green camp and pan-blue camp yesterday proposed their own amendments to the "Statute Governing Preferential Treatment to Retired Presidents and Vice Presidents" (卸任總統副總統禮遇條例) to abolish or reduce the stipends paid to former leaders.
The law states that former presidents and vice presidents get a life-time pension. The pan-green camp proposes paying former presidents a pension for 12 years, while former vice presidents would get a pension for four years. They want to reduce the size of the pensions as well, but have yet to propose final figures.
The pan-blue camp proposes paying former presidents and vice presidents pensions for just five years. But they think their should be a "penalty" clause.
"If the country's economy slows down, their pensions will drop, too," said KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順).
Huang also suggested that the paychecks for all presidential advisers be cut as well.
"Our final version of the amendment will be discussed during the legislative meeting next Monday," she said. "If we want to reform, we shall reform everything, from the top to the bottom."
The pension issue became a hot topic after DPP Legislator Lin Chuo-shui (林濁水) proposed looking into the appropriateness of using taxpayer money to pay for a lifetime's worth of preferential treatment for former presidents and vice presidents.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching