The legislature yesterday passed a bill to promote unconditional equal access to benefits and establish a legislative basis for welfare funding at all levels of government.
The Social Welfare Basic Act (社會福利基本法) is to be forwarded to the Presidential Office to be signed within 10 days if it is not opposed by the Executive Yuan.
There have been calls for the act to be established since 1998, so Taiwan is proud to add it as its ninth basic act, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wu Yu-chin (吳玉琴) told reporters.
Photo: Screen grab from Wu Yu-chin’s Facebook account
The act would be a guide for social welfare policies and urge the Ministry of Health and Welfare to adopt strict standards for the social welfare sector, DPP Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) said.
It is to uphold the right of Taiwanese to seek social aid and would establish a legal basis for social welfare affairs, DPP Legislator Chuang Jui-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said.
Social and Family Affairs Administration Director Chien Hui-chuan (簡慧娟) said that the legislation would provide governments at all levels with principles to refer to as they improve the welfare system.
Social insurance is mandatory and insurance payments would be made for all incidents to ensure that people have economic guarantees and healthcare, the act says.
The central government is to set a welfare policy program to be reviewed at least every five years, informed by general government policies, changes to socioeconomic structures, welfare needs and available resources, it says.
Local governments should be generous in their social welfare budgets, and those with inadequate funding and resources should prioritize welfare facilities, it says.
Expenditure for social welfare at all levels of government should observe social welfare regulations, but the central government should consider subsidizing important policies based on demographics, the economy and other factors of local governments, it says.
The needs of the social welfare sector should be considered when local governments make plans for national land, and social housing should have space set aside for social welfare purposes, the act says.
Local governments should repurpose public facilities, land or buildings that are abandoned or are underused, it says.
Governments at all levels should assess demographics, the socioeconomic situation, geography and resources to determine whether there is a need to foster additional professional social welfare talent, it says.
Local governments must establish systems to certify, register and train social welfare personnel, it says.
Additional reporting by Yang Cheng-yu
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS