The Conference on Sustaining Taiwan's Economic Development's social security session yesterday adopted a set of recommendations, including the goal of enacting a national pension plan law by next year. The law would be part of the government's plan to ensure every citizen a degree of economic security in their retirement.
The conclusion was reached as approximately 150 government, civic group, business and aca-demic representatives discussed issues covering how to achieve a more comprehensive social welfare system.
Problems such as the effects of an aging population and a decreasing birth rate have become more pressing in recent years and have exposed more potential problems, such as the lack of a complete long-term care system for the elderly, along with the issue of unequal distribution of income.
Aging society
According to figures cited at the session, as of May, 9.85 percent of the population was over the age of 65. Ten years from now, the elderly are expected to account for 13 percent of the population.
This 13 percent will be equivalent to the percentage of the population under the age of 15. The level also approaches the international standard for an aging society, in which the elderly account for 14 percent of the total population.
Extrapolating, the figures indicate that in 20 years, the proportion of elderly would exceed 20 percent of the population, and reach 37 percent in less than 50 years.
Looked at another way, the birth rate decreased to an average of 1.115 children last year, and for every person over the age of 65 there were 7.4 working people.
The dependency ratio will continue to drop this year to 7.2 to 1, and within 45 years will reach 1.5 to 1, meaning that for every elderly citizen, there will be 1.5 working people, according to conference statistics.
Participants also resolved to build a long-term care system for the nation's senior citizens.
Wu Yu-chin (吳玉琴), secretary-general of the Federation for the Welfare of the Elderly, said that long-term care services should not be provided by for-profit organizations, which may choose to care for only certain people and not others because of cost or convenience.
The elderly, and especially the permanently impaired, often do not have the ability to discern or choose quality services, according to Wu.
Eva Teng
More industries should participate in providing services to ensure a better overall environment, Teng added.
The session decided to establish a better educational and care system for children and women.
Income gap
The growing gap between the rich and the poor was another topic of intense discussion, with the session concluding that the government would provide more opportunities for minority families.
Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator David Huang (
However, Yen Mei-chuan (顏美娟), president of the Home-makers' Union and Foundation, said the government should instead focus first on caring for the children of working-class and minority families because without help, many of these children grow up to pose public safety problems.
Many are deprived of their basic rights and the widening gap between the rich and the poor will continue if the government does not tackle the problem, Yen said.
Huang also called for the recognition of women's rights, since currently no women's agency exists directly under the Executive Yuan.
Instead, women's issues are divided among governmental agencies, meaning they aren't properly discussed.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
RSS