Several Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) employees yesterday stormed into the Executive Yuan in Taipei as part of a protest against , as party staff face mass layoffs as a result of the government freezing KMT assets.
Nine KMT employees — some riding bikes and one driving a motorcycle — charged into the Executive Yuan’s main building, where Premier Lin Chuan’s (林全) office as they tried trying to reach the second floor.
“Come out, Lin Chuan. Workers cannot survive,” the protesters reportedly said.
Photo: CNA, provided by a member of the public
The nine protesters are members of a KMT self-help group seeking to secure salaries and pensions, as the party has failed to pay wages and announced a downsizing plan after the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee froze KMT bank accounts and checks and prohibited the party from accessing bank accounts to make salary payments.
The self-help group has staged a prolonged protest in front of the headquarters of the Cabinet committee for 34 days, but the committee has ignored their demands to allow the KMT to pay salaries, said group convener Chou Po-yin (周柏吟), who was part of the group that stromed the building.
“We feel helpless after sleeping on the street for 34 days and we have no choice, but to lodge a complaint with the Executive Yuan, the committee’s supervising agency,” Chou said.
The nine face unemployment by the end of this month, as the KMT plans to lay off all of its 738 employees before rehiring 310.
Party employees received only half salary for the past two months and do not know if they will receive any salary this month, Chou said.
The group staged a protest in front of the Ministry of Labor earlier yesterday over what they said was the committee’s infringement of labor rights, but they were denied entry into the building.
The Executive Yuan condemned the incident, but said it would not pursue the intruders over the intrusion and property damage, although they will face charges of damaging a historic building and contempt for authority.
One of the nine is said to be a KMT official appointed by KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱).
The handling of ill-gotten party assets is a major part of the government’s efforts to bring about transitional justice and the KMT should not mislead the public by confusing the party assets issue with labor rights, the Executive Yuan said, calling on the party to take care of its employees.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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