The Ministry of Civil Service has denied 15 out of 38 applications for posthumous national pension payment for civil servants who died in the line of duty last year, saying that the circumstances surrounding the deaths did not meet legal requirements.
“Death in the line of duty” is defined by Article 5 of the Act Governing Civil Servants’ Retirement, Discharge and Pensions (公務人員退休資遣撫卹法), which states that for civil servants to be considered to have died in the line of duty, they must have perished on the battlefield; due to accidents during performance of job-related activities or due to inherent dangers of the job; following accidents or disease while on an official mission; after succumbing to a sudden onset of illness on the job, on official business or in their office; or due to overworking, accidents, dangers incurred or sudden health problems while traveling on official business.
Minister of Civil Service Chou Hung-hsien’s (周弘憲) yesterday told the Examination Yuan, that 282 civil servants passed away last year, 92 percent of whom died due to illness or accidents.
The ministry approved pension payments in 23 cases, Chou said.
The applications that were rejected were judged to be deaths from ordinary illness or accidents unrelated to the civil servants’ jobs, Chou said.
Chou said 12 cases involved deaths due to sudden onset of illness while on the job or in their office, while in a number of cases civil servants had died from sudden illness, accidents or dangers inherent to the job while traveling on public business.
Discretionary changes had been made to individual cases, Chou said, citing one case in which a late police officer’s pension was reduced to 25 percent.
The police officer died from sudden health issues while on patrol, Chou said, adding that the original application had cited death from duty-related dangers.
In another instance, a civil servant had died while delivering official documents to another office, Chou said.
The person’s heirs were eligible for a 10 percent one-off pension payment, but the ministry had judged the case to involve sudden illness while on duty, on official business or in the office and instead awarded them 15 percent of the original pension, he said.
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