Dozens of unemployed people and their children staged a demonstration on Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office yesterday, urging President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his administration to help the jobless find employment.
“Being jobless is not just a problem for the unemployed worker, it also affects their circle of friends and their families,” Hsiao Chung-han (蕭忠漢) of the Association for Rights of the Unemployed told the demonstrators, many of whom held placards showing images of Ma above the words “feel the pain of the people.”
Huang Yao-hung (黃耀宏), 58, was one of the protesters.
PHOTO: AFP
Huang, from Taichung, used to work for a machinery manufacturer, but lost his job when the company moved its factory to China several years ago.
“Now I only work low-paying part-time jobs, but I have five kids to feed — all college students,” Huang said, adding that he needed to spend more than NT$100,000 on tuition fees for his children twice a year.
“All I want is for the government to help me find a stable job,” he said.
Another protester, Liao Mei-jung (廖美蓉), whose husband was laid off when Chunghwa Telecom was privatized several years ago, agreed.
“Social welfare resources should be spent on taking care of those who can’t work,” Liao said. “Since we’re still capable of working, providing job opportunities for us should be the priority.”
Aside from economic pressure, she said, “the psychological pressure [of being jobless] is the most troubling.”
In addition to offering help with finding stable employment, the demonstrators said the president should fulfill his campaign promise of extending the period of time an unemployed person is eligible to receive unemployment benefits from six months to one year.
They urged Ma to set up an unemployment rights commission under the Presidential Office “to periodically check employment promotion policies,” Hsiao said.
The demonstrators’ request to meet officials from the Presidential Office was not met yesterday as it was a weekend day.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
RSS