There is no legal basis for retired government employees collecting subsidies for their children’s education, a government report said.
The report by the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center said that retired civil servants have been collecting child education subsidies that add up to more than NT$1 billion (US$31.6 million) annually, or 80 percent of the total payouts for the subsidy.
The payouts reached NT$1.41 billion last year, the report said.
It said that the use of the subsidies by retirees has “no legal basis,” adding that the situation should be rectified.
The education benefits are outlined in the Essential Benefits for Nationwide Public Service Employees (全國軍公教員工待遇支給要點), which provides assistance to cover the education costs of working civil servants’ children from elementary school to university. The subsidy provides NT$35,800 per term for private school tuition and NT$13,600 for public school tuition.
The Executive Yuan in 1976 issued a statement about the possibility of allowing retirees to apply for the subsidy, sparking debate at the time.
The number of claimants of the subsidy last year was 69,082, of which 59,868 were retirees, collecting NT$809 million, the report said.
This year’s estimated claims from the Veterans Affairs Council are NT$800 million, comprising 59,727 claimants, it added.
Only government employees can apply for the subsidy, the report said, adding that a civil servant’s connection with the government is severed upon retirement.
It called the granting of the subsidy to retired employees a “violation of social justice.”
Statistics from the Ministry of Education show that there are 914,000 students studying or paying student loans. An average of 319,254 students apply for loans annually, of which 301,664 are college or university students — the rest being high-school students.
The number of students who apply to private schools is four times the number of students who apply to public schools, the statistics showed.
The ministry said it allocates about NT$3 billion annually for subsidies to pay the interest on tuition loans.
Democratic Progressive Party caucus whip Wu Ping-jui (吳秉叡) said the government has been discussing the subsidy as part of its reform of the pension system, adding that it would prepare a draft bill next year.
“Applications for the subsidy by those currently in office is something that could be considered reasonable, but retirees should not receive it... it is unfair to families carrying the burden of student loans,” New Power Party (NPP) Legislator Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said, adding that the NPP supports pension reforms that would eliminate disparities in pay and benefits between individuals in the same occupation.
Civil servants all have different backgrounds and are paid according to individual qualifications, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Secretary-General Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said, adding that the investigation must be thorough and not simply change things for the sake of changing them.
“Revisions must be made only after reaching a consensus through prudent and comprehensive investigation to avoid repercussions,” Chiang said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS