Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday said she was giving up her year-end bonus in a move to uphold fairness and justice in the light of recent controversy about year-end pension bonuses to retired government employees and government fiscal difficulties.
Lu said in a press release that she would give up the one-and-a-half-month bonus to facilitate reforms on benefits for civil servants, military personnel and teachers.
There has been widespread discontent among the public over the government’s preferential treatment for those three groups of people, Lu said.
The former vice president also submitted a six-point appeal for an austerity drive to remedy the government’s fiscal difficulties.
Lu called for reducing the president’s state fund by one-third, slashing half of the budget for business trips for elected representatives of all levels and cutting the budget for celebrations and festivities.
The preferential interests rates of 18 percent for retired government employees and 13 percent for retired state-owned institution employees, as well as the subsidy of NT$30 per vote for candidates of public office elections, should be reduced or abolished, she said.
Finally, payrolls of state-owned companies and government-funded non-profit corporations should be trimmed, she said.
Lu said this was not the first time she had volunteered to receive less salary in the name of social justice because she and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) volunteered for a 50 percent pay cut when they took office in 2000.
Lu’s year-end bonus has been part of the preferential treatment package stipulated by the Act Governing Preferential Treatment to Retired Presidents and Vice Presidents (卸任總統副總統禮遇條例), according to a staff member at Lu’s office.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
SPACE VETERAN: Kjell N. Lindgren, who helps lead NASA’s human spaceflight missions, has been on two expeditions on the ISS and has spent 311 days in space Taiwan-born US astronaut Kjell N. Lindgren is to visit Taiwan to promote technological partnerships through one of the programs organized by the US for its 250th national anniversary. Lindgren would be in Taiwan from Tuesday to Saturday next week as part of the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ US Speaker Program, organized to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday. Lindgren plans to engage with key leaders across the nation “to advance cutting-edge technological partnerships and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers,”
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
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