Minister of National Defense Yen De-fa (嚴德發) has submitted plans to give combat troops additional seniority-based bonuses to the Executive Yuan’s Directorate-General of Personnel Administration, a source said yesterday.
The ministry is lobbying lawmakers and members of the Cabinet to support the scheme, which is designed to boost morale, increase troop retention and improve combat proficiency, the source said on condition of anonymity.
The law defines combat troops as service members deployed with a Category I or II unit, who receive a monthly combat arms bonus.
Photo provided by Army Command Headquarters
Combat arms bonuses this year are to cost the government an estimated NT$3.71 billion (US$120.4 million) and the implementation of the new scheme would increase that budget by NT$1.26 billion to NT$4.95 billion, assuming that combat troop strength remains at 75,000, a report prepared by the ministry for the Executive Yuan said.
Category I units are infantry, artillery and armor companies, or their equivalent on surface warships and submarines, and Category II units refers to the headquarters company of infantry, artillery or armor battalions, or their equivalent on warships and submarines.
The proposal would classify combat troops by seniority as Class A, B or C, with all but the most junior class of troops receiving additional bonuses, the source said.
Class A troops are those who have served for six years or more, Class B are those who have served for three years or more and Class C are those with less than three years of service, they said.
For Category I units, the combat arms bonus would rise from NT$5,000 to NT$9,000 for Class A troops and to NT$7,000 for Class B troops, while Class C troops would see no change to their bonus, the source said.
For Category II units, the monthly bonus is to rise from NT$3,000 to NT$7,000 for Class A and to 5,000 for Class B troops, while Class C service members are to see no change to their bonus, they 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