Younger teachers should not bear the full burden of pension reforms, advocates said yesterday, calling for retired teachers to accept benefit cuts as discussions of the National Pension Reform Committee continued in Taipei.
“After watching recent pension reform discussions, we have started to think about where our money is headed,” said Janet Lin, who has taught at New Taipei City schools for 10 years.
Lin said that according to regulations, contributions are deducted directly from teachers’ salaries for use in the Civil Servant Pension Fund, raising the possibility that younger teachers could be left without retirement funds if the program continues on its course toward bankruptcy.
“In 1996 [when the system was instituted] there were 200,000 active teachers and 70,000 retirees, but now there are only 180,000 active teachers and 110,000 retirees,” she said.
“If the contribution rates are problematic, the full burden should not be borne by us” Lin said. “Our elders are always emphasizing that you should not retroactively apply any changes, but rate changes over the past 20 years are not our fault and to expect us to shoulder the responsibility is not fair.”
She called for teachers to have the right to refuse to continue making contributions to the fund.
“If we keep following the current course, the fund will go bankrupt in 10 years and we will not get anything; so why should we have to give all this money to retired teachers instead of investing it ourselves?” she said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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