The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus yesterday slammed the government’s economic policies, saying they have contributed to the nation’s soaring unemployment rate.
DPP Legislator Wang Sing-nan (王幸男) told a press conference that since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office last year, Taiwan’s investments in China have grown from NT$733.6 billion (US$22.38 billion) to NT$857.3 billion but domestic investment decreased from NT$470.7 billion to NT$246.2 billion.
Because of the decrease in domestic investment, companies and factories have been forced to downsize and reduce manpower, leading to unemployment, which hit a record high last month.
The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) announced on Monday that unemployment rose 0.06 percentage points to 5.82 percent, or 633,000 people, last month, a new high since the survey began in 1978. Government officials attributed the record high rate to recent university graduates entering the labor market.
“President Ma used the wrong prescription to cure the economics and job market,” Wang said. “His economic policy of lifting restrictions on Taiwan’s investment in China has contributed to the rise in [Taiwan’s] unemployment.”
DPP Legislator Pan Meng-an (潘孟安) said that since Ma took office, unemployment, the suicide rate and the number of poor families had all hit new highs.
“Unemployment rose from 3.19 percent to 5.82 percent, or 633,000 people. If we add hidden unemployment numbers, the number of unemployed people would be more than 1 million,” he said.
When the government came up with measures to help young people find jobs, it neglected unemployed middle-aged and elderly people who are usually their family’s main bread-winner, he said, as he called on the government to come up with measures to help such people find work.
DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) further accused the Ma administration of ignoring high unemployment by mulling plans to recognize Chinese academic degrees, open white-collar positions to Chinese applicants and sign an economic cooperation framework agreement with China, which Cheng said ran the risk of affecting at least 4 million jobs in Taiwan.
At a separate setting, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) said the government would watch the changes in the unemployment rate on a weekly basis to keep it within an acceptable range.
Liu said the Council for Economic Planning and Development had estimated that the unemployment rate would reach 6 percent, but would fall in September.
“The government’s strategies to address unemployment have demonstrated effectiveness, but we have to continue our ongoing efforts to bring the figure down further,” Liu said when asked for comment.
Liu said the government has confidence that the unemployment rate can be kept within an acceptable range as the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) and the Ministry of Education (MOE) will soon launch job fairs to help college students find internships.
To help new college graduates find jobs, the government has implemented a temporary program to put graduates in contact with enterprises interested in providing one-year internship opportunities.
Meanwhile, Vice Premier Paul Chiu (邱正雄) said the CLA, the MOE and other agencies would co-host job-matching fairs from Wednesday to July 17 nationwide. The fairs are expected to help 13,000 graduates to find jobs.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the