The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) encouraged workers who plan to apply for labor insurance loans to file their applications soon because the last day to apply is Friday.
This is the seventh year the council has offered loans from the National Labor Insurance Fund to low-income families to help them through the Lunar New Year holidays.
This year, the labor insurance loan program started accepting applications on Jan. 4. Council officials said this year’s loan program saw a sharp surge in submitted applications in the first three days compared with previous years.
In the three days after the Bureau of Labor Insurance began taking applications, more than 50,000 people submitted applications.
The nearly 30,000 applications on the first day was double the number of applications submitted on the first day last year.
However, after several days, the frenzy for loans cooled down. The latest statistics showed that in the two weeks after the council began taking applications, about 120,000 applications for loans were submitted. Of these, more than 40,000 were approved and the applicants have received or will soon receive payments.
Council officials urged applicants to complete the process at one of the 146 branches of the Land Bank of Taiwan before Friday’s deadline, saying the council will not accept late applications.
The council has set aside a budget of NT$20 billion (US$629 million) for the loans this year, which means that up to 200,000 applicants could benefit from the fund. Council officials said that based on current trends, the budget would not need to be expanded because it is estimated that it will be enough to cover loans for all approved applicants.
Applicants who have participated in the national labor insurance program for at least 15 years with no unpaid debt to the insurance program can apply for a loan of up to NT$100,000, with an annual interest rate of 1.35 percent.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Insurance reported that the number of workers insured under the national labor insurance program has recently risen at a quicker-than-expected rate.
About 9 million workers were insured as of the end of October, a peak that was reached three months ahead of official estimates.
The bureau cited several reasons for the faster-than-expected growth, including a recent policy that requires workers holding more than one job to be insured for every job, as well as general growth in the workforce.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
President William Lai (賴清德) today called for greater mutual aid between Taiwan and Japan in a post commemorating the 15th anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, saying that “true friendship reveals itself in hardship.” The magnitude 9 earthquake, the largest ever recorded in Japan, and the ensuing tsunami left 18,500 people dead or unaccounted for, and caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. It was the world's worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Japan and Taiwan share a close bond built on mutual aid and trust, Lai said on Facebook, adding that he hopes they would
RSS