The Executive Yuan is assessing the possibility of raising the welfare allowance for elderly farmers, Cabinet Spokesperson Chen Mei-ling (陳美伶) said yesterday.
"Premier Su Tseng-chang (
The move by the Cabinet came in the wake of a pledge by former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is seeking the KMT's presidential nomination, that he would raise the monthly allowance for elderly farmers from NT$5,000 to NT$6,000 if elected next year.
Former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), who is vying with Su for the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) presidential nomination, said in a recent statement that he had already lifted the allowance from NT$4,000 to NT$5,000 during his term as premier.
Chen said that the possibility of increasing the allowance to NT$6,000 per month would be discussed with officials from the Ministry of Finance, Council of Agriculture, Ministry of the Interior and the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS).
The allowance is granted to farmers above the age of 65, and about 701,000 farmers around the country are eligible to collect the premium each month.
According to DGBAS figures, the government has earmarked NT$42 billion (US$1.27 billion) for the allowance in this year's governmental budget, and it is estimated that increasing the allowance to NT$6,000 would cost the government an extra NT$8 billion per year.
DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yee (
"We have in the past discussed this issue with the party caucus as well as the legislature's Economics and Energy Committee," Lee said.
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