Members of teachers’ unions yesterday joined retired military personnel in a march to the Executive Yuan in Taipei to protest pension reform promotional materials, condemning the use of the term “unjust” on a poster.
The poster depicts a child’s hand touching an adult’s hand, calling for pension reform “for the sake of children.”
Dozens of National Federation of Teachers’ Unions members and the retired military personnel — who have been camped outside the Legislative Yuan to protest pension reform — twice clashed with police while waiting for a government representative to hear their demands over the poster, which was approved by the Cabinet earlier this month and calls the pension system “unjust.”
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
“What we see is the Democratic Progressive Party continually seeking to vilify military personnel, civil servants and teachers on the issue of pensions, a campaign for which it has even enlisted government agencies and the education system,” federation director-general Huang Yao-nan (黃耀南) said, adding that numerous ministries and schools had been instructed to distribute the poster electronically.
“If you want to push for pension reform, you can make your case, but there is no need to use the word ‘unjust,’” he said.
“The government should be objective and stop portraying us as fat cats and the enemy,” Huang added.
Retired general Yeh Yi-sheng (葉宜生) said that the government has cited a desire to correct its finances as motivation to enact pension reforms, but has proposed an NT$880 billion (US$28.86 billion) plan to build infrastructure.
The government has been reneging on its promises and alleging that civil servants, educators and military personnel have been growing fat from too much money, he said.
“They want us to face the brunt of difficult times together,” Yeh said. “If that is the case, perhaps lawmakers, high-ranking officials and the president should ‘face the difficult times together.’”
Federation member Lin Shuo-chieh (林碩杰) said the poster promised “false reforms and real oppression,” adding that the distribution of such materials to schools was reminiscent of China’s Cultural Revolution.
“The content of the poster was mistaken and inappropriate,” said Department of Information Services Director Kao Tsun (高遵), who met with protesters outside of the Executive Yuan. “Negativity cannot achieve our aim of two-way communication. We will not use it in the future.”
The department on Friday removed the poster from the Cabinet’s official Web site and instructed other government agencies to take it down from their respective sites, he said.
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