The New Power Party (NPP) yesterday said that it would hold a cross-caucus negotiation on its proposal to include doctors in the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) in the hopes that the bill would be addressed in Friday’s plenary session at the legislature.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First First Party (PFP) have all put forward similar proposals to limit physicians’ working hours, so the NPP would like all four parties to negotiate over their bills, NPP caucus convener Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said.
NPP Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said the debate over whether to include doctors in the act has dragged on for a year, and President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) inaction and negligence allowed the issue to remain unresolved.
The act excluded certain professions since it was promulgated, including doctors, Huang said.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare in 2013 responded to corrective measures ordered by the Control Yuan, including adding doctors as a protection profession under the act, but the ministry had not taken any concrete action, the lawmaker said.
Passage of the NPP’s bill would not only improve doctors’ rights, but also the quality of the healthcare system, he said.
President-elect Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) incoming government should establish a clear timetable for passing the bill so that it would not repeat the mistakes made by Ma’s administration, he said.
Taiwan Medical Alliance for Labor Justice and Patient Safety director Tseng Chia-lin (曾家琳) said the alliance disagrees with minister of health and welfare-designate Lin Tzou-yien’s (林奏延) statement that it would take the ministry four years to place resident doctors under the act’s protection and even longer to safeguard the rights of contract doctors or those employed by private hospitals.
That idea would discriminate against contract doctors and doctors working at private hospitals, Tseng said.
Ellery Huang (黃致翰) from the Doctors’ Working Conditions Reform Task Force said that his group had been fighting for six years to have doctors included in the act.
Lin needs to explain how he arrived at the four-year estimate, he said, and work on a way to reduce the timeframe to one year.
The incoming administration needs to start formulating plans to fulfill its promise to protect doctors’ rights, Ellery Huang said.
In other developments, Hsu said the NPP’s proposal put forward on Monday to restore the rights of victims of injustices and persecutions perpetrated by the KMT regime had cleared due procedures and would be reviewed by the Judicial and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee.
NPP Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) said that if passed, the bill would mandate that a committee be established under the Executive Yuan to restore the rights of an individual, a group or Aboriginal community that had been violated by a former administration.
The bill would also require Tsai to hold regular meetings to facilitate work to restore Aboriginal and human rights, Lim said.
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