The government is considering allowing public servants three days per year of paid mental health leave, Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Director-General Su Chun-jung (蘇俊榮) said yesterday.
The agency on Monday forwarded the proposal to the Examination Yuan, which is to review it jointly with the Executive Yuan.
The measure is designed to improve the mental fortitude of public-sector workers, with mental health the focus of the Presidential Office’s Healthy Taiwan Promotion Committee, Su told a meeting of the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statues Committee at the legislature in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The three days would be part of the seven days of guaranteed personal leave, he said.
It would be paid leave, would not affect performance evaluations and would not require proof, Su said, adding that work units could not refuse requests for mental health leave, nor issue punitive measures of any sort over them.
Regarding holidays, Su said that he was not opposed to the issue of making Labor Day a national holiday, adding that his agency would comply with the Ministry of the Interior’s decision pending its review of May 1 becoming a state holiday.
Su said he had reservations over a proposal to reinstate seven national holidays removed by the government in 2016, as the move would affect the education of children in rural areas.
Separately, the Examination Yuan said that while wage hikes would mean that college graduates would start at NT$55,000 per month in public-sector jobs if they pass the civil service exams, the number of people sitting the exams had dropped to 4,994 in 2023 from 34,000 in 2012, an 86 percent decline.
The branch would initiate a four-year plan to attract talent to work for the government, Examination Yuan Secretary-General Jason Liu (劉建忻) said.
Measures include fostering interbranch collaboration, ameliorating regulations for national exams and personnel management, moving to a digital-based system, improving administrative staff training for better performance at the local and central government levels, and cultivating friendlier working environments, Liu said.
Minister of Examination Lio Mon-chi (劉孟奇) said that the ministry would amend regulations to create a more flexible exam system.
The government would update its archives of exam questions more frequently, propose strategies to attract more people to work in the public sector, and use artificial intelligence, big data and the cloud to create more innovative services, Lio said.
Additional reporting by CNA
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS