The Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center recently advised the cash-strapped Veterans and Veterans’ Dependents Foundation to reduce the benefits it grants to its staff, which are better than what civil servants are entitled to.
The center recently said that the foundation not only allots 1.5 months of pay to its workers for year-end bonuses, in line with the standard for civil servant benefits, it also grants special bonuses during three major holidays — Lunar New Year, the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival — and NT$35,000 as a performance bonus for each senior employee evaluated as having performed well.
The center said those benefits surpassed those enjoyed by public servants and should be eliminated.
During deliberation over the central government’s general budget for 2013, the Legislative Yuan passed a resolution stating that foundations established with government aid are under the aegis of government policies, they are public interest groups and should act as such, the center said.
The resolution stipulated that such entities adhere to the standards for civil servants when allocating bonuses.
The center’s report said the Veterans and Veterans’ Dependents Foundation this year allocated NT$650,100 for eight senior employees’ bonuses — including their 1.5 month year-end bonuses, which totaled NT$386,000; bonuses totaling NT$200,000 for senior workers with good performance evaluations; and NT$65,000 for the three holidays’ special bonuses.
According to data provided with the report, the foundation has been doling out special bonuses, excluding year-end bonuses, from 2011 to this year.
Senior workers with good performance evaluations received up to NT$39,000 per person in 2011, which was adjusted to NT$35,000 the next year.
The Lunar New Year bonuses ranged from NT$3,000 to NT$6,000 per person, with bonuses for the other two festivals ranging between NT$2,000 and NT$5,000.
The center’s report also revealed that the foundation had been operating with a budget deficit from 2011 to last year, and it called on the Veterans Affairs Council to urge the foundation to draw up cost-cutting measures to make it self-sufficient and balance the books.
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