The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) yesterday said it would increase the budget for holiday labor insurance loans by NT$10 billion (US$300 million), bringing the total to NT$20 billion.
Council Minister Jennifer Wang (王如玄) and lawmakers negotiated the increase at the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee meeting yesterday.
While some lawmakers sought an increase, Wang said she was hesitant to do so because of concerns about the financial condition of the labor insurance fund, which would affect the benefits of all insured workers — not just individuals living in poverty, she said.
The program is designed to help workers in financial straits get through the Lunar New Year holiday by offering loans of as much as NT$100,000 based on a worker’s past record of labor insurance contributions and other conditions.
In the past, the council has provided labor insurance loans of up to NT$100,000 to workers who have been enrolled in the labor insurance program for at least 15 years and do not have a bad record of paying insurance fees.
Lawmakers and council officials reached a consensus whereby the maximum loan per worker will remain NT$100,000, while being made available to 100,000 more workers than in previous years. As such, the total budget for the program will be NT$20 billion.
Council officials said they agreed to offer the loan to as many as 200,000 applicants, as they expect that more workers will need help amid the financial downturn.
The council has long hoped to make the loan available to more individuals.
Last year, about NT$19.2 billion was lent to eligible applicants.
This year will mark the seventh time the council offers the loan.
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