There are too many “fat cats” at state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) and the resultant high personnel costs have illegitimized the company’s plan to raise electricity prices, lawmakers said yesterday.
It would be unfair for the company, which claims to be losing money, to raise electricity prices by 30 percent as planned when its employees earn two to three times the national average, lawmakers of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union said in a joint meeting held at the Legislative Yuan.
DPP Legislator Wu Ping-jui (吳秉叡) said the DPP would not rule out slashing Taipower’s budget next year if the company does not change its salary structure and if it refuses to increase the low electricity rates it levies for industrial use, a practice that Wu said was unfair to household electricity users.
Wu said the number of Taipower employees had increased from 26,500 in 2008 to 27,200 last year, while the company’s personnel costs had risen from NT$37.2 billion (US$1.3 billion) to NT$43.5 billion in the same period.
“The average annual salary for a Taipower employee last year was more than NT$1.59 million,” he said.
The state-run company exceeded its budgets by two-fold but still handed out bonuses, he said.
Taipower provides electricity to the top five electricity-consuming industries, which accounted for 45 percent of total industrial electricity consumption last year, with a 21 percent subsidy, which was NT$39.8 billion last year, Wu said.
“It is time to change the policy because times have changed,” he said.
More than half of Taipower’s employees receive an annual salary of more than NT$1 million, while the company distributes year-end bonuses equivalent to 4.6 months of salary to each employee, regardless of whether the company makes a profit.
“If Taipower has been losing money, the high personnel costs, including bonuses, do not make sense,” TSU Legislator Huang Wen-ling (黃文玲) said.
The company was able to distribute bonuses because it excluded policy-related losses, a result of preferential rates offered to government agencies and the families of military personnel, among others, from its accounts, Huang said.
In response, Lin Hung-yuan (林宏遠), Taipower’s vice general manager, said 46.5 percent of the company’s employees earned an annual salary of more than NT$1 million because 60 percent of the employees have worked at the company for more than 26 years.
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