The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) should implement its planned pension cuts for private-sector workers concurrently with those for retired military personnel, civil servants and public-school teachers to ensure that pension reforms are conducted in an equitable manner, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers said yesterday.
DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) last month said that no timetable had been set for pension cuts in the private sector.
DPP lawmakers speaking on condition of anonymity have conceded that with the year-end elections, pushing through private-sector pension cuts would do the party a disservice and could cause its “downfall,” KMT caucus whip Lin Te-fu (林德福) said.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
If so, the DPP is pursuing “biased” pension reforms by “going after the easy targets,” Lin said.
The Cabinet has said that pension reforms for the three groups of retired public employees will take effect on July 1.
The KMT would support pension reforms if cuts were implemented simultaneously for retired military personnel, public servants, public-school teachers and private-sector workers, KMT caucus deputy secretary-general William Tseng (曾銘宗) said.
He called on the DPP to honor the conclusion reached at a meeting of the Presidential Office’s Pension Reform Committee in January last year that all pension reforms would be implemented at the same time.
KMT lawmakers Alex Fai (費鴻泰) and Wang Hui-mei (王惠美) urged the DPP to weigh its priorities when allocating budgets before introducing pension cuts.
Pension cuts for civil servants and public-school teachers — which were approved by the legislature in June last year — are expected to save the government between NT$20 billion and NT$30 billion (US$686 million and US$1.03 billion) each year, Fai said.
If the DPP would scrap plans to open the new coal-fired Shenao Power Plant, stop maintaining the shuttered Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) and not carry out the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program, it would save the nation NT$800 billion, enough to keep the pension system afloat for several decades until the government comes up with a better reform plan, they said.
More than a year has passed since Minister Without Portfolio Lin Wan-yi (林萬億) promised the “800 Heroes” group of military veterans that the government would communicate and coordinate with them before proposing pension cuts for veterans, KMT Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) said.
Lin has not delivered on his promise, even though the Cabinet could submit its draft bill on the pension cuts for veterans to the legislature for review any moment, Lai said.
The DPP clearly devised the pension reforms to benefit the party ahead of the elections, but they are no less than a “persecution” of veterans, civil servants and public-school teachers, he said.
Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan would issue a decision at 8pm on whether to cancel work and school tomorrow due to forecasted heavy rain, Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said today. Hsieh told reporters that absent some pressing reason, the four northern cities would announce the decision jointly at 8pm. Keelung is expected to receive between 300mm and 490mm of rain in the period from 2pm today through 2pm tomorrow, Central Weather Administration data showed. Keelung City Government regulations stipulate that school and work can be canceled if rain totals in mountainous or low-elevation areas are forecast to exceed 350mm in
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
The Central Emergency Operations Center (CEOC) has made a three-phased compulsory evacuation plan for Hualien County’s Mataian River (馬太鞍溪) disaster zone ahead of the potential formation of a typhoon. The plan includes mandatory vertical evacuation using air-raid-style alarms if needed, CEOC chief coordinator Chi Lien-cheng (季連成) told a news conference in the county yesterday. Volunteers would be prohibited from entering the disaster area starting tomorrow, the retired general said. The first phase would be relocating vulnerable residents, including elderly people, disabled people, pregnant women and dialysis patients, in shelters and hospitals, he said. The second phase would be mandatory evacuation of residents living in
COUNTERMEASURE: Taiwan was to implement controls for 47 tech products bound for South Africa after the latter downgraded and renamed Taipei’s ‘de facto’ offices The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still reviewing a new agreement proposed by the South African government last month to regulate the status of reciprocal representative offices, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. Asked about the latest developments in a year-long controversy over Taiwan’s de facto representative office in South Africa, Lin during a legislative session said that the ministry was consulting with legal experts on the proposed new agreement. While the new proposal offers Taiwan greater flexibility, the ministry does not find it acceptable, Lin said without elaborating. The ministry is still open to resuming retaliatory measures against South
RSS