The Council of Labor Affairs’ (CLA) annual labor insurance loan will begin accepting applications from eligible workers starting today at the 146 local branches of the Land Bank of Taiwan.
This year marks the seventh time that the council has offered the loan program, which is designed to lend money from the National Labor Insurance Fund to low-income families to help them through the Lunar New Year holidays.
Applicants who are in poor financial circumstances, have no previously unpaid debts to the fund and have been insured under the National Labor Insurance Program for at least 15 years are eligible to apply, the council said.
Applicants can apply for a loan of up to NT$100,000 (NT$3,100), with an annual interest rate of 1.35 percent.
Officials said that the loan program was meant to help workers who are having financial problems and was not designed to help the fund boost profits.
The 1.35 percent interest rate, which includes a small processing fee, is not much higher than the average deposit rate of the fund, the officials said.
The council has set aside a loan budget of NT$20 billion this year, which means that as many as 200,000 eligible applicants will be able to benefit from the fund.
Last year, about the fund lent a total of NT$19.2 billion.
The deadline for applications is Jan 22.
To save workers the trouble of personally visiting a Land Bank branch, the council has set up a system on its official Web site to allow people to file their initial applications online.
Applicants will also be able to check the status of their loan applications online, and will only need to make one visit to a Land Bank branch office to sign documents, the officials said.
Approved loans will be paid out to workers before the Lunar New Year next month.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
IN FULL SWING: Recall drives against lawmakers in Hualien, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have reached the second-stage threshold, the campaigners said Campaigners in a recall petition against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒) in Taichung yesterday said their signature target is within sight, and that they need a big push to collect about 500 more signatures from locals to reach the second-stage threshold. Recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) and Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) are also close to the 10 percent threshold, and campaigners are mounting a final push this week. They need about 800 signatures against Chiang and about 2,000 against Yang. Campaigners seeking to recall Lo said they had reached the threshold figure over the
RSS