Minister of Education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧) yesterday told lawmakers that when private schools close down, their land and assets must be returned to the foundation that ran them, not to an individual or private company.
Speaking to a meeting of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee, Chiang was responding to questions raised by Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan’s (李鴻源) recent suggestion that private schools’ land be converted to commercial use as an incentive to get schools with declining enrollments to close.
That suggestion was questioned by educators and civic organizations who said it amounted to permitting business groups to profit through land speculation and manipulation of transactions.
Chiang said that a private school’s main consideration is serving the public interest, therefore when declining enrollment forces a school to shut, the same objective would apply.
When a private school ceases operating, the ministry will monitor the closing to ensure the proper handling of teachers’ severance packages and student transfers.
Lee’s suggestion was aimed at helping resolve a school’s financial issues, such as employee severance packages or outstanding back wages, Chiang said, but it was just a suggestion.
The public’s interest comes first, Chiang told the lawmakers, so the money from the conversion of a private school’s land would go to the school’s legal foundation.
The legislature in December 2011 approved an amendment to the Private School Act (私立學校法) to allow private school land to be used for other purposes related to cultural and social welfare institutions.
The amendment exempted private schools from being subject to a penalty under the Land Tax Act (土地稅法) for converting their land to a use inconsistent with the original designated purpose. Violators face a fine equal to double the land value increment tax.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods