Starting on Jan. 1, subsidies offered to families with young children would be extended to all parents of young children regardless of household income, the Executive Yuan said yesterday.
Currently, only households that pay less than 20 percent annual income tax — those who earn less than NT$1.21 million (US$37,685) per year — are eligible for the subsidies. The government offers childcare allowances to parents with children younger than two and daycare subsidies to those with children under five.
A school subsidy offered to parents with five-year-old children would also be extended to families with five-year-olds who do not attend school, the Executive Yuan said, adding that the parents of 41,900 five-year-olds nationwide are expected to benefit from the new policy.
Taipei Times file photo
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) announced the policies while presenting a report on government measures to tackle the nation’s declining birthrate.
“Our aim is take better care of families with kids six and under, and the two new policies together will benefit 1.03 million children across Taiwan,” the Ministry of Education said.
From Jan. 1, parents with children under two would be offered up to NT$5,000 per month to help with public daycare fees, or NT$8,500 for children attending so-called “quasi-public” daycares or nurseries.
Those with children aged two to six would have their monthly subsidies for public daycare fees capped at NT$1,000 for the first child, while the limit would be NT$2,000 for non-profit daycares and NT$3,000 for quasi-public daycares.
Su also said the minimum monthly wage for public daycare workers who care for children would be increased from NT$28,000 to NT$35,000.
Those working at quasi-public daycares and kindergartens would be paid a minimum of NT$36,000, up from NT$30,000, he said, adding that the increase is expected to benefit 75,000 childcare workers.
Su said the increase aims to help retain childcare workers at public and quasi-public daycare centers and kindergartens.
The Ministry of Education said its budget for next year was increased by NT$5.5 billion to pay for the new policies, bringing its budget to more than NT$100 billion.
The legislature’s Education and Culture Committee on Thursday last week passed the resolution abolishing the income requirement for childcare subsidies.
The Ministry of Education first began proposing measures to tackle the declining birthrate in 2018, and one of the measures it came up with was raising childcare allowances and subsidies, which was implemented in August, Minister of Education Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠) said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS