Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) apologized to the public yesterday for his remark that the inventor of unpaid leave deserved to receive a Nobel Prize.
“I would hereby like to apologize if the public had a different interpretation [of my remark] and if it caused any inconvenience,” Wu said in a written statement, adding that he did not intend to cause offence.
Wu drew widespread criticism from civic groups and legislators on Wednesday over comments he made on Tuesday while meeting with winners of the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ award for creating substantial job opportunities.
He said that whoever created the unpaid leave system deserved the Nobel Prize because the system helped businesses retain ties to their employees during the global economic crisis without the need for severance pay, adding that it allowed employees to return to their jobs when the economy improved.
Enraged by Wu’s comments, labor activists on Wednesday called the premier “brain dead,” saying he was insensitive to the plight of workers. Wu at the time responded by saying people needed to develop a sense of humor.
Finding that his explanation failed to quell labor groups’ anger, Wu issued a written apology yesterday, saying he was only giving credit to workers and employers for their cooperation and mutual understanding during the harsh economic downturn.
Earlier yesterday, about 20 young labor rights activists staged a protest outside the Executive Yuan, calling Wu “brainless.”
“Many corporations took the opportunity [presented by unpaid leave during the economic downturn] to lay off employees or force senior workers to resign,” Youth Labor Union 95 member Hu Meng-yu (胡孟瑀) said.
Lee Ying-hsuan (李盈萱), one of the protesters, said President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) should allow the premier to take unpaid leave so he could develop a sense of empathy for the difficulties faced by workers.
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