Several advocacy groups warned today that the advancement of gender equality policies for the entire year could come to a complete standstill as they criticized a budgetary amendment proposed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to cut funding for gender equality services.
Gender equality advocacy groups including Taiwan Equality Campaign, the Taiwan Gender Equality Education Association, the Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy and the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association released a joint statement today in response to a bill proposed by KMT lawmakers that would cancel almost the entire budget for services provided by the Executive Yuan’s Department of Gender Equality if it passes.
KMT Legislator Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩) proposed the bill that would cut funding for gender equality services from NT$16.27 million (US$490,000) to just NT$3,000, which was cosigned by KMT Legislators Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) and Hsu Yu-chen (許宇甄).
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
As the legislative review of the central government budget for the fiscal year 2025 remains in progress, the groups called for legislators to adopt a professional and constructive attitude towards reviewing the proposal.
Improving amendments and policies advocating for gender equality requires not only legislative oversight but also sufficient resources from the budget to support work such as collecting statistics and data, researching policies and holding discussions, they said.
The Awakening Foundation also released a statement yesterday, saying that although legislators proposing and reviewing bills is necessary within Taiwan’s democratic system, the proposal clearly lacks substance and shows that the legislators who proposed it do not understand the governance, labor division or responsibilities of Taiwan’s gender equality system.
Hsu said that many ministries have implemented gender equality policies, not just the Executive Yuan's Department of Gender Equality, and her former political stances show that she is a staunch advocate for gender equality policies and their budgeting.
This proposal is intended to make the Department of Gender Equality play a more active role in policy oversight, and the proposing legislators hope the department can clarify its plans to continue its work so that legislators can adjust the budget accordingly, she said.
The department has not effectively communicated with legislators, leading to misunderstandings among activist groups who are not familiar with the legislative process and believe that the budget cuts would affect the implementation of gender-equality related policies, which is untrue, she added.
Hsu urged the department to send personnel to report to legislators how they could improve policy oversight in future.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS