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FEATURE: Civil servants' vacation subsidy could be nixed

Civil servants working at the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) formed their own workers' association last Saturday, with its founding chairman, Ku Sung Mao (古松茂), vowing that his No.1 priority was to cancel the issuance of National Travel Cards.

The cards are mainly issued to civil servants and are similar to regular credit cards. They were meant to subsidize civil servants for domestic tours during their vacations.

Under the present system, each civil servant, irrespective of rank, receive NT$16,000 every year in domestic travel subsidy.

The civil servants must first use the National Travel Cards to pay for their expenses and then submit a request for reimbursement of expenses.

Each card holder must use up the subsidy by the end of the year, or the money will be returned to the treasury.

To encourage workers to use the cards, the Central Personnel Administration has a regulation requiring government employees to take at least two weeks of vacation every year.

If employees must work during this two-week vacation, they are not paid overtime.

Aside from the two weeks of forced vacation, each civil servant gets NT$600 per day for any additional holiday or any unused holiday.

The government requires that the card be used at retailers certified by the Tourism Bureau.

Ku said that using the National Travel Card has made it difficult for public servants to take vacations, because the government has set so many restrictions on how the cards can be used.

"A civil servant has a legal right to take a vacation," he said, "and if he fails to use the holidays and chooses to work, he must receive comparable pay."

A government worker surnamed Lai (賴), who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the majority of civil servants were unlikely to use up their annual forced vacation.

Lai said the subsidy may be considered a perk for some low-rank government workers, since they earn just as much a day if they decide to work during their vacation.

For high-rank officials, however, the subsidy is actually less than what they would have made had they chosen to work instead.

Lai said NT$16,000 was not enough to cover all the domestic travel expenses.

Lai used her family as an example. She said spending a night at an average-price hotel could cost as much as NT$12,000, which does not leave much for other expenditures.

Another government employee surnamed is Hsu (徐) complained about the inflexible card-use requirements. Having worked as a dentist at a public hospital for more than 20 years, Hsu said his duties had often prevented him from taking long vacations, adding that he only used the National Travel Card after being reminded by colleagues that the subsidy was about to expire.

"It [the card] is by no means given to encourage us to go on a vacation," he said. "No. It merely forces us to spend in ways they want us to."

Hsu said it was inappropriate to associate the use of the National Travel Card with the number of holidays a civil servant may have.

Last year, the Keelung District Prosecutors Office was forced to press charges against 451 government workers because they were found to have used the cards illegally.

A store owner and a certified retailer where the cards were used had produced fake receipts so that employees could receive a reimbursement. In return, the store owner received about 18 percent of each transaction.

Asked to comment on the proposal to abolish the policy, officials were quick to blame others.

Chang Shi-chung (張錫聰), director of the Tourism Bureau's hotel, travel and training division, said the bureau was merely executing the plan initiated by the Council of Economic Planning and Development (CEPD), which first proposed the use of National Travel Cards.

Chang claimed that about 50 percent of the subsidy was used for tourism purposes.

The CEPD refused to comment.

Ku said the CLA Workers' Association would soon present its case to the CEPD.

"Should it continue to ignore our request, we will protest," he said.
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