Should the government fail to reform pensions, educators themselves would face much heavier tax burdens, as the shrinking number of teachers means that individuals will have to pay a higher proportion of their salaries into the pension fund, the Ministry of Education (MOE) said.
The ministry said it based its calculations on a report it issued last year detailing expenses for pension payouts under the current system.
Of the 118,000 former teachers on the monthly pension payout program, about 50,000 retired within the last decade while 6,728 retired last year, the report said.
The ministry reported a spike in retirement rates for teachers in recent years, with 3,000 retiring from public schools in 2015.
An estimated 8,000 elementary and junior-high school teachers are to retire by 2020, the ministry said.
The reduced numbers of working teachers — due to low birthrates — means that higher proportions of their salaries would have to go toward paying pensions, the ministry said.
Annual pension payouts are set to peak in 2026, with the government expected to pay at least NT$140 million (US$4.51 million) in that year tocover the pensions of educators and civil servants.
The Educators’ Pension Fund (教育人員退撫基金) might well become insolvent before 2030, the Ministry of Civil Service said.
Another fund should be established, National Federation of Teachers Unions president Chang Hsu-cheng (張旭政) said.
All monies saved from implementing reforms, which include phasing out the 18 percent preferential saving rates for educators, civil servants and military personnel who retired before 1995, should be allocated to the pension fund, Chang said.
The preferential saving rates were implemented in 1958 due to the perceived low income of educators, civil servants and teachers in comparison with other occupations. It was abolished for all members of these professions who retired after 1995.
According to 30-year-old elementary-school teacher Cheng Chia-wei (鄭嘉偉), the pension fund problem affects all teachers under 50 who are still working.
Teachers under 35 might see the fund going bust before they have even retired, Cheng said, adding that the pension system should be reformed so younger teachers can get decent pensions.
In related news, the civil ministry said that in 2015 alone, 12,000 civil servants retired — the highest number in a single year over the past decade.
The number of civil servants is declining, the Ministry of Civil Service said, adding that the number is expected to decline a further 3 to 5 percent from its current 340,000.
Without reform, civil servant pensions would cost NT$160 trillion over the next 30 years, the ministry said.
The bill rises to more than NT$340 trillion when combined with teachers’ pensions, the civil ministry said.
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