The Executive Yuan yesterday approved a draft amendment to the Police Personnel Management Act (警察人員人事條例) that would raise the seniority pay for junior police officers, firefighters and coast guard personnel by NT$1,370 (US$45.77) and is expected to benefit an estimated 66,000 people.
The salary hike was proposed in recognition of the laborious and dangerous nature of the work of police, firefighters and coast guard personnel, as well as more than 28,000 of the nation’s approximately 64,000 police officers and firefighters not having opportunities to receive promotions under the current system, Minister of the Interior Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮) told a news conference in Taipei.
The amendment seeks to raise the ceiling on seniority payments for fourth-tier (entry level) officers, firefighters and coast guard personnel, which would translate to an increase of NT$1,370 per month in their seniority pay and about NT$1,600 in their pension.
Photo: CNA
Civil servants’ salaries are composed of a basic pay, seniority pay and a professional allowance.
If approved by lawmakers, the proposed salary hike would benefit 30,000 people within the first three years of its implementation — including 28,000 within the first year — with the number expected to gradually rise to 66,000, Yeh said.
Applicable to fourth-tier personnel, the proposal favors entry-level police officers, firefighters and coast guard personnel, who account for more than 80 percent of staff in the three professions, he said.
That would also translate to an increase of NT$1,600 in their pensions, allowing them to receive an additional NT$19,000 each year in their retirement, he said.
The proposed salary hike would add about NT$700 million to the government’s annual expenditure — a reasonable cost compared with other options the Ministry of the Interior had considered, Yeh said, adding that Premier William Lai (賴清德) had expressed his support for funding the wage hike.
Asked if the proposed raise could be passed in an upcoming extraordinary legislative session this summer, Yeh said that the proposal has gained wide support among lawmakers across party lines and the ministry is optimistic that the Legislative Yuan would approve it soon.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,