Veterans, civil servants and teachers’ organizations rallied outside the Presidential Office Building yesterday, accusing the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of “stacking the cards” when selecting members of the national pension reform committee.
Hundreds of protesters from the Pension Reform Watchdog Alliance — a consortium of more than 30 veterans, civil servants and teachers’ groups — marched from 228 Peace Memorial Park to the Taipei Guest House to send off four representatives to the committee’s first meeting, applauding and cheering as the representatives marched toward the Presidential Office Building.
Protesters shouted that they could support reform, but would oppose any “shoddy changes,” demanding that their rights and dignity be protected.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The committee has been billed by the government as a body to build consensus and draft reform plans for the nation’s diverse patchwork of pension schemes for members of different professions, most of which are likely to go bankrupt with the next few decades.
The fear that the relatively generous benefits enjoyed by former civil servants, military personnel and public school teachers will be targeted was palpable at the rally, which saw representative of teachers, civil servants, veterans and employees of state-owned enterprises breaking a “black box” signifying the opaque selection of committee representatives, pulling out “black hands” of “promise breaking” and retroactive benefit cuts.
Vice president of the National Federation of Education Unions and national pension reform committee representative Liu Ya-ping (劉亞平) said that Tsai’s reform efforts are the “manipulations of a capitalist government.”
“[Minister Without Portfolio] Lin Wan-i (林萬億) was allowed to select whoever he wanted for the committee, so most representatives are the government’s ‘hired thugs’ (打手),” he said, accusing Lin — who is responsible for pension reform efforts — with “rigging” the results of committee deliberations.
“If I get to choose committee members, the final conclusion it reaches will be my own,” he said, calling for a separate grassroots committee to be convened, with results of deliberation put to a referendum vote.
“Without tax and budget justice, there can no pension reforms,” he said. “Right now, the government and capitalists are unwilling to put up the necessary funds, forcing workers and others who are hired to fight over scraps.”
“We can support reforms, but not absolutely equal benefits for all, because each occupation is different,” said Wu Shih-huai (吳斯懷), a retired general and vice president of the National Army Schools Alumni Association. “What have we done wrong? We do not want to retire in our 40s, but we have to because the nation wants able-bodied soldiers.”
“We sacrifice our youth to the nation and suffer long absences from our families — our pensions are not ‘benefits’; they are our rights, just like salaries,” he said. “If you are going to cut pensions, you should also pay the overtime we are owed for being on duty 24-7 for 20 to 30 years.”
Taiwan Railways Administration Workers Union chairman Hsieh Sheng-ming (謝勝明) said that there should be a review of how pension funds are funds are managed rather than tax increases, adding that mismanagement of the funds had contributed to impending bankruptcy.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater