Social workers specializing in child protection are being seriously exploited, lawmakers and social groups said yesterday.
Social workers involved in protecting children from abuse face heavy workloads and long working hours and cannot protect themselves from danger, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) said.
Many social workers are hired as part-time or temporary workers and earn minimal pay, while those employed by the government are asked by local authorities to perform tasks unrelated to their main job, said Wang, a former CEO of the Child Welfare League Foundation.
Wang released a ranking showing the 10 counties and cities in Taiwan with the lowest ratio of children to social workers who are working on child abuse cases. Hualien County topped the list, with only one social worker per 256 cases, followed by Taitung and Yilan counties.
Eva Teng (滕西華), president of the Taipei Association of Licensed Social Workers, accused local authorities of late payment to social workers, saying one-third of the counties and cities listed still owed wages, adding that she was angry that social workers are hired as part-time or temporary workers.
“Can social welfare and sexual assault prevention work be handed to part-time workers?” she asked.
Wang also urged the ministry to hand the management of social workers to the central government, rather than local governments, and asked the Council of Labor Affairs to bolster inspections of social workers’ employment conditions.
In response, Chen Su-chun (陳素春), deputy director of the ministry’s Department of Social Affairs, said her department would strive to provide the information.
Child Welfare Bureau Director-General Chang Hsiu-yuan (張秀鴛) said her agency would increase the number of social workers each year and would make hiring social workers involved in protecting children its first priority.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
Travel agencies in Taiwan are working to secure alternative flights for travelers bound for New Zealand for the Lunar New Year holiday, as Air New Zealand workers are set to strike next week. The airline said that it has confirmed that the planned industrial action by its international wide-body cabin crew would go ahead on Thursday and Friday next week. While the Auckland-based carrier pledged to take reasonable measures to mitigate the impact of the workers’ strike, an Air New Zealand flight arriving at Taipei from Auckland on Thursday and another flight departing from Taipei for Auckland on Saturday would have to
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS