The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has proposed a bill to require the government to subsidize the Labor Insurance Fund with at least NT$80 billion (US$2.71 billion) per year to keep it from going bankrupt, KMT caucus whip William Tseng (曾銘宗) said on Sunday.
The KMT caucus called on the government to address the imminent bankruptcy of the fund, which is intended to provide retirement pensions for workers.
It proposed an amendment to the Labor Insurance Act (勞工保險條例) for the government to allocate at least NT$80 billion for the fund annually to ensure its sustainability, Tseng told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: CNA
The amendment would also require that the fund’s finances be clearly defined and that the government be responsibility for ensuring it meets its payouts.
A 2020 Ministry of Labor report said that the fund had an estimated NT$10 trillion in hidden debt, which was increasing annually by NT$500 billion, KMT caucus deputy secretary-general Hsieh Yi-fong (謝衣鳳) said.
The fund’s financial condition is rapidly deteriorating, Hsieh said, adding that in the past five years, it has posted losses and could go bankrupt by 2028.
Tseng said that although the government in 2017 promised to improve the pension systems for military veterans, public-school teachers, civil servants and workers, it had yet to take action on reforming the labor insurance system beyond allocating funds.
Unless the central government subsidizes the fund with at least NT$80 billion per year, it would go bankrupt within six years, affecting more than 10 million workers, Tseng said, citing ministry data.
He said that when he asked Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) about the issue during a legislative question-and-answer session in 2020, Su told him the government would take responsibility for labor insurance payouts and prevent the Labor Insurance Fund from becoming insolvent.
Su said that a fund reform proposal would be submitted to the legislature by 2024, Tseng said, adding that he now wants the government to say when it would propose such a bill.
KMT Legislator Cheng Cheng-chien (鄭正鈐) said that the government should improve the management of the fund by studying the management mechanisms of the retirement and compensation funds of private schools.
It is only by improving the Labor Insurance Fund’s management and maintaining its balance at a stable level that it can be prevented from going bankrupt, Cheng said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching