Thousands of private school teachers protested in front of the Presidential Office yesterday, calling the retirement system for private school teachers “the nation’s worst” and urging reforms.
“Private school employees are trying to tell the public that they are only asking for justice,” National Teachers Association chairman Liu Chin-hsu (劉欽敘) told demonstrators assembled on Ketagalan Boulevard. “They want the public to know there is a group of people who work hard to educate children, but they are under the worst retirement system among all employees in Taiwan.”
While the government has promised to allow private school teachers to transfer their insurance policy from public servants’ and teachers’ insurance (PSTI) to labor insurance, Liu said, the laws have only been “half revised,” forcing private school teachers to stay in the PSTI, while being denied certain benefits that public school teachers enjoy.
“[Premier] Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) talked with us in March, he agreed to our request [to transfer to labor insurance] and said he would look into and get back to us, but it’s been more than six months now,” said Lin Chih-hsien (林志賢), a teacher from Shute Home Economics and Commercial High School in Kaohsiung.
“We private school teachers and staff have the worst retirement protection,” said Kuo Shih-tsan (郭石燦), a teacher at Taipei Jingwen High School. “We’ve had enough, so we’re ‘celebrating’ Teacher’s Day out on the street,” referring to tomorrow’s national holiday.
The demonstration, which lasted about two hours, ended peacefully.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
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