The legislature yesterday sent a draft package of amendments to the farmers’ pension statute for a second reading. If passed that would pave the way for an increase in monthly payments to senior farmers from NT$6,000 (US$197) to NT$7,000, starting next year.
With Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers opposed to a “wealthy farmers exclusion” clause in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-drafted amendment package, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said he would invite the caucus whips of various parties to a meeting next week to work out their differences.
Wang told reporters after a plenary session that although lawmakers from across party lines agreed to increase the farmers’ pension by NT$1,000, they were divided over whether wealthy farmers should be eligible for the payments.
“As a result, further cross-party consultations are needed to reach a consensus,” Wang said.
KMT and DPP legislators remained deadlocked over a means testing proviso attached to the amendment that would bar -farmers with non-agricultural income of more than NT$500,000 per year or non-farming related property valued at more than NT$5 million from qualifying for the pension payments.
KMT whip Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛) called for DPP lawmakers to stop boycotting the bill “for no reason,” saying that the KMT legislative caucus had been exchanging views with the DPP on the draft amendment for more than a month.
Pan appealed to the DPP caucus to pass the bill into law quickly so that elderly farmers facing -financial difficulties can receive a little bit more help as soon as possible.
However, DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) opposed the KMT version of the amendment, saying that a DPP version, which does not exclude any elderly farmers, even wealthy ones, should be passed and adopted instead.
“Stop making it difficult for elderly farmers over a mere NT$1,000 hike,” she said.
Despite the partisan bickering, KMT legislators yesterday -submitted the pension bill for a second reading, expected to begin on Tuesday at the earliest.
The KMT caucus yesterday also sent another amendment to the National Pension Act for a second reading that would increase welfare payments for eight categories of disadvantaged people.
The KMT caucus submitted the two welfare bills on Tuesday, in the hope that they would be debated and passed into law this week, thereby ensuring their implementation at the beginning of next year.
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:
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