The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) might only be able to pay part of its workers’ salaries this month due to lackluster fundraising, according to high-ranking party officials.
The KMT has been dogged by a salary conundrum after its bank accounts were frozen as part of an ongoing investigation into the source of its assets by the Executive Yuan’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee, despite managing to pay off its staff’s overdue wages for September and last month using loans taken out by KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), with party officials acknowledging that they might only be able to pay half of this month’s salaries in a worst-case scenario.
Hung late last month borrowed NT$90 million (US$2.8 million at the current exchange rate) to pay workers’ salaries amid a threat by the KMT’s union to stage a protest should the party fail to address the issue.
The loans came from Hon Hai Precision Industry Co and Foxconn chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) and another businessman, who asked to remain anonymous.
The KMT last month launched two fundraising programs in an attempt to assuage its financial straits, but a source familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the amount has raised so far has fallen far short of expectations.
One fundraising drive encourages KMT members to pay a “special party fee” of at least NT$2,000, while the other asks members of the public to donate NT$1,000.
The two programs have generated only NT$10 million and NT$20 million respectively, the source said.
Asked about the possibility of the KMT taking out more loans, one KMT member, who also requested anonymity, said borrowing money has always been a contentious issue in the party, particularly as it has yet to pay off the loans taken out by Hung.
KMT Administration and Management Committee director Chiu Da-chan (邱大展) on Saturday said that the funds raised from the “special party fee” program are insufficient to pay about NT$45 million in party workers’ salaries for this month.
However, the party recently laid out a plan to reduce its workforce, which it sent to the committee with a request for access to a portion of the KMT’s frozen funds to be able to pay the reduced personnel, Chiu said.
The KMT recently also submitted to the Taipei Department of Labor an outline of its plans for employee dismissals, with negotiations with employees scheduled to begin on Wednesday, he added.
According to the plan, 433 staff, or about 58 percent, could face dismissal prior to the Lunar New Year, Chiu said, but added that the party would be unable to execute the plan unless it manages to come up with between NT$150 million and NT$180 million to cover severance payments and retirement packages.
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