The Cabinet yesterday approved an amendment to the Act Governing the Retirement of School Faculty (學校教職員退休條例) that raises the threshold for teachers and employees in public schools to apply for a monthly pension.
Under current regulations, public school faculty are eligible for retirement when they have served for more than five years and reach the age of 60 or when they have served 25 years.
Currently public school teachers and employees who have served more than five years but less than 15 years receive a lump sum payment, while a monthly pension is only granted to those who have worked for more than 15 years when they reach 60 or those who have served 25 years when they reach 50.
LONGER WAIT
Should the amendment pass the legislature, public school teachers will not be able to collect their pension as monthly installments until they have worked more than 25 years when they reach 60 or have served more than 30 years when they reach 55.
The proposed amendment also removes an article that gives an additional payment of 10 months salary to public school faculty who apply for a lump sum pension at the age of 55.
Revisions in the statute were aimed at saving the civil servant pension fund from a debt crisis as an increasing number of civil servants are opting for a monthly pension instead of a lump sum payment.
DEBT CELING
In other developments, a bill that would lower the central government’s debt ceiling by 1 percentage point of GNP, or NT$130 billion (US$4 billion), passed a preliminary review in the legislature yesterday.
At present, the Public Debt Act (公共債務法) sets the ceiling at 40 percent of average nominal GNP for the past three years.
The proposed amendment that cleared the legislature’s Finance Committee would reduce the limit to 39 percent.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Fai (費鴻泰) said the measure was intended to warn the government against wasteful spending.
Meanwhile, the amendment would also change the calculation method used to determine the debt ceilings of special municipalities, counties and townships.
SPECIAL MUNICIPALITIES
Under the current law, the debt ceiling for special municipalities is 5.4 percent of the average nominal GNP for the past three years. That for counties is 2 percent, and that for townships is 0.6 percent.
The proposed amendment would adjust the ceiling to 200 percent of the combined expenditure of annual and special budgets for special municipalities, 70 percent for counties and 25 percent for townships.
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