Following large-scale layoffs in January last year to streamline the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) after it hit financial difficulties, rumors that the party is mulling another wave of redundancies have rekindled fears among party employees.
In January last year, months after the Executive Yuan’s Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee became operational, the KMT laid off 738 staff, before rehiring 310 on new fixed-term contracts that are subject to annual renewal.
Just weeks before party workers’ contracts are set to expire, the party is planning another round of layoffs before next month’s Lunar New Year holiday, Chinese-language online news platform NOW News quoted an anonymous KMT cadre as saying in a report published on Wednesday last week
The party aims to further cut its personnel costs, which still stand at NT$20 million (US$677,438) each month, the party cadre said, adding that layoffs would be smaller in scale than the previous one, according to the report.
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) was quick to dismiss the report.
A KMT official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that many party employees were worried about losing their jobs before the Lunar New Year holidays, when people generally incur higher expenses.
However, last year’s layoffs have left most local party chapters understaffed and the number of employees whose contracts would not be renewed at the end of the month should be low, the official said.
According to KMT statistics, most of the party’s assets have been frozen by the assets committee and party Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) has borrowed NT$140 million since he assumed the chairmanship in August last year to pay the party’s monthly administrative and personnel costs, which total NT$30 million.
KMT headquarters has allegedly decided to cut off additional funding for its 22 local chapters starting next month and is reported to have asked them to raise funds by themselves.
Under KMT regulations, which were amended in August last year, party headquarters should only shoulder the salaries of high-ranking cadres at local chapters in addition to an additional monthly administrative allowance of between NT$120,000 and NT$180,000.
A KMT member, who also wished to remain anonymous, said that the original purpose of amending party charter in September 2016 to allow direct election of local chapter heads was to make the party’s local branches more financially independent and self-sufficient.
However, Wu instructed the party to continue paying for the chapters’ other expenses after the first batch of 10 directly elected chapter heads in October last year encountered difficulties raising funds.
“To stop borrowing money, KMT headquarters have decided to let all 22 local chapters share the burden,” the KMT member 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