A straw vote held by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus yesterday showed that the majority of DPP lawmakers favor the caucus’ version of a draft bill that seeks to lower civil servants’ average income replacement rate from 75 percent to 60 percent over the course of 10 years.
The poll was held concurrently with a second reading of pension reform draft bills, during which the civil servants income replacement rate became a source of contention among legislative caucuses and within the DPP caucus.
A draft bill tabled by the DPP to cut the average income replacement rate from 75 percent to 60 percent in 10 years secured the majority vote, DPP Legislator Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
A motion by DPP Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康) to reach the goal in five years was defeated, while the Presidential Office Pension Reform Committee’s version of the bill, which set a 15-year time frame for the goal, was left out of the poll.
The DPP caucus’ version is the “middle ground,” DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) said.
In response to President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) remark that she hoped the DPP caucus would not stray too far from the draft bill proposed by the committee, Lee said that the caucus respected Tsai’s opinion.
“I take it that she meant she cannot act according to her own will, as she must answer to the public,” Lee said. “The committee spent a great deal of time and energy on the draft bill, so she hopes that we would not sway too far from the draft. We respect her personal opinion.”
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
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
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