Workers in Taiwan do not get extra time off for national holidays if they fall on weekends, but a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker is hoping to change that with legislation that would turn administrative guidelines on holidays into a formal statute.
“It would deprive people of the right to take a vacation” if under the new statute people were not given days off to make up for the holidays missed, KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said at a hearing of the legislature’s Judiciary, Organic Laws and Statutes Committee.
big gap
However, the Ministry of the Interior said the current system for civil servants was necessary to avoid creating too big a gap between public and private sector vacation time.
Civil servants currently have weekends (Saturday and Sunday) and national holidays off.
However, existing guidelines stipulate that if a national -holiday (except for the Lunar New Year break) falls on a weekend, it is not to be made up. Most companies in Taiwan follow this formula.
not made up
The ministry included that stipulation in its draft bill on “commemorative days and holidays,” but Wu and other lawmakers have raised objections to the measure.
Urging the government and companies to stop “taking advantage of the people,” Wu said that making up a weekend holiday on a Friday or Monday and creating a long weekend would also be good for the economy.
Deputy Minister of the Interior Lin Tsyr-ling (林慈玲), however, said that adding more days off for civil servants would only widen the gap in the number of holidays taken between employees in the public and private sectors.
There will be 115 vacation days next year, including weekends, Lin said, and if people wanted more, the government also had to consider whether such a demand would jeopardize the country’s industrial and commercial development.
Surveys conducted by the ministry show that most people support maintaining the current practice, she said.
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
RSS