Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said he made a slip of the tongue when he said that giving out childbirth subsidies is a policy aimed at winning support and gaining votes during elections.
“People are often told [about the policy] of getting a subsidy of NT$20,000 for each child that is born. That is only [meant to] fool them into giving their votes,” Ko said in a live-broadcast quiz show aired on Saturday evening.
The policy was introduced in 2010 under then-Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) in an effort to increase the city’s low birth rate.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Ko yesterday attended an event promoting the traditional practice of zhuazhou (抓週), in which a baby chooses from items symbolizing various professions to give their parents an idea of what their child might be interested in, and the shouxian (收涎) ritual to stop babies from drooling, held at Lin An Tai Historical House and Museum (林安泰古厝).
Asked to explain his remarks on childbirth subsidies, Ko said he had misspoken by saying “fooling” voters, when he actually meant “an effort to win votes.”
Ko said the reason behind the nation’s declining birth rate is complicated, and that people might not be willing to give birth to a child just because the government will give them a NT$20,000 reward.
“Only increasing the childbirth subsidy cannot solve the problem of declining childbirth — there are still the issues of raising a child and education that follow on from that,” he said, adding that an emphasis should be placed on supporting child rearing and education, as the effect of only giving out a childbirth subsidy is limited.
When asked whether subsidizing the city’s preschools could be viewed as “an effort to win votes,” Ko said that social welfare is necessary when it is financially viable for the government, but that the childcare subsidy policy could vary in different areas as the financial conditions of every local government are different.
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