Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) was forced into an embarrassing retraction yesterday when she announced that the interest rate for the labor insurance loan scheme will be lowered from the original 2.935 percent to 1.92 percent.
The loan scheme, designed to offer workers in dire financial straits loans of up to NT$100,000 based on their past record of paying labor insurance fees and several other conditions, has attracted attention this year from lawmakers and labor associations alike.
The CLA has been heavily criticized over its insistence the loan rate remain at certain levels, despite the economic downturn and low bank interest rates.
On Dec. 29, legislators passed an impromptu motion prohibiting the loan rate from exceeding 1.92 percent during the legislature’s Health, Environment and Labor Committee meeting. This was prompted by reports saying that housing loans offered to civil servants and teachers had an interest rate of only 1.92 percent, so it would be unfair to offer loans at a higher interest rate to struggling workers.
Wang made the new rate announcement at a press conference held by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) at the Legislative Yuan. She was accompanied by Su Ler-ming (蘇樂明), general manager of the Land Bank of Taiwan, who said that the bank had agreed to make the adjustment in accordance with government policy.
In related news, the CLA reported that 143,000 people have applied for the loan so far this year, setting a record high in the six-year history of the loan. The total amount of loans applied for was NT$14.35 billion (US$45 million), also an all-time high in the history of the loan scheme.
Because of poor economic conditions nationwide, the CLA has also pushed back the deadline for taking loan applications from the original Dec. 31 to Jan. 20.
However, once the number of applicants reaches the limit of 200,000 people, the council will terminate the application period even if it’s before the Jan. 20 deadline.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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