The New Power Party (NPP) yesterday proposed a set of draft amendments aimed at improving the conservation of Aboriginal cultural heritage, curbing the use of offshore companies to evade taxes and doctors included under the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
The Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法) often fails to recognize Aboriginal cultural heritage, party lawmakers told a news conference in Taipei.
Some ancient Aboriginal community sites cannot be recognized as “relics” or “cultural landscapes” as defined in the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act, while Aboriginal architecture, usually made of natural materials that often require reconstruction, cannot be recognized as historical buildings because the act defines such buildings as those whose main structures have remained intact, they said.
A special mechanism should be established to acknowledge Aboriginal cultural heritage, they added.
Heterogeneous cultural practices that reflect a specific Aboriginal culture as a whole should also be recognized, because the current system reviews potential heritage issues on a case-by-case basis, which has led the government to list the Tsou’s mayasvi (rituals of war) as a national intangible cultural heritage, but not their kuba (gathering places of men), NPP Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) said.
“Aboriginal communities should be the competent agency in charge of reviewing and conserving Aboriginal heritage,” he said.
When potential cultural heritage items are discovered during construction of a development project, the central government, not the local one, should have jurisdiction to determine if the items warrant heritage protection to prevent a conflict of interest, Lim said.
NPP Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said the party would like to see offshore tax evasion curbed by establishing a new system that levies tax on shareholders of a company with positive revenue even if the firm does not distribute revenue to shareholders.
“The mechanism is to prevent people from setting up overseas shell companies and transferring income and assets to the companies while having those companies withhold revenues from shareholders to evade tax,” Huang said.
The NPP also proposed adding doctors to the list of professions covered under the Labor Standards Act, saying that doctors are overworked, but lack legal protection.
“I have held talks with the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Health and Welfare, which say it is not possible to include doctors in the act until 2023. However, doctors pay labor insurance fees and the law defines their income as salary, so the government should address their exclusion,” NPP Legislator Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸) said.
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