The Social Democratic Party (SDP), a center-left political party founded in March by social activists, yesterday accused the major political camps of stalling progress on the proposed long-term care services act.
“Providing an adequate system for childcare, as well as long-term care services for elderly or disabled people, should be the No. 1 Mother’s Day gift,” SDP convener Fan Yun (范雲) said yesterday.
She added that the long-awaited reforms are integral to promoting increased job opportunities for women, as they are more likely to adopt caregiving responsibilities in the absence of public services.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Fan’s remarks came amid a legislative deadlock over the reforms, with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) unable to reach a consensus over funding for proposed public long-term care services.
While the KMT proposes using funds from tobacco taxes and an increase in the government’s budget, the DPP advocates hiking the sales, gift and inheritance taxes.
The draft first went under review in the legislature four years ago, where it remained until the Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee passed a preliminary reading in January last year.
With intraparty caucus negotiations set to end by Tuesday, the act could see a floor vote in a plenary session set for Friday.
On Friday last week, KMT Legislator Chiang Hui-chen’s (江惠貞) tearfully accused the DPP of blocking the reform, saying that tax-based funds were far too unstable.
“[DPP Chairperson] Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), you have gone crazy. You have truly gone insane,” Chiang said at a KMT news conference, adding that years of effort have been rendered useless because of obstruction by the DPP.
However, Fan yesterday accused Chiang of shedding “crocodile tears” and urged the KMT to “stop lying to the electorate.”
She also accused the DPP of breaking promises to promote public childcare during former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration from 2000 to 2008, saying that it bowed to pressure from private for-profit preschools.
SDP legislative candidate Jennifer Lu (呂欣潔) asked whether the KMT’s proposal to use funds from tobacco taxes encourages the public to smoke more cigarettes.
The government should gradually increase taxes to provide a reliable financial base for long-term, community-based care, Lu said.
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