An amendment proposed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wan Mei-ling (萬美玲) would allow a new parent to take partially paid leave for a full year.
Under the current law, in families with two incomes, each parent can apply for half a year of leave at 60 percent of their regular salary, or one parent can apply for one year of leave, but they would only receive 60 percent of their salary for the first six months.
Wan has proposed amending the Employment Insurance Act (就業保險法) to allow one parent to take a year of leave at 60 percent of their regular salary.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
Since 2009, only 18.1 percent of dual-income families have applied for one year of leave, Wan said, adding that it is evidence that the current policy does not meet the needs of most families.
“It is not easy raising kids, and most families today are dual-income households, but of the 616,958 dual-income families that had babies last year, only 136,476 applied for one year of leave,” she said.
To receive the full benefits of the current policy, which aims to divide the responsibility of childcare, men are also required to stay at home with their children, she said.
However, over the past 10 years, only 17 percent of new fathers have applied for partially paid leave, showing that the policy is ineffective, she said, adding that in most cases, families receive less income than they would otherwise have been entitled to.
“The low birthrate is a national security problem. The government cannot afford to be rigid in its policies. It is better to loosen the regulations and let couples decide themselves who will take leave,” she said.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
China has reserved offshore airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts that are usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. The alerts, known as notice to air missions (NOTAMs), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert
RSS