Almost three-quarters of the public thinks the nation’s pension system needs to be reformed, and almost as many like the idea of immediate reforms, a poll released yesterday by the Taiwan Style Foundation found.
The foundation said that 70.3 percent of respondents thought reforms were needed and 64.9 percent backed immediate reforms, while 14.1 percent of respondents said the pension system does not need to be reformed
Even more respondents (73.2 percent) voiced support for the government’s goal of “keeping the pension funds afloat for at least a generation,” while 63 percent said they agreed with the government’s aim to ensure a pension system that can afford stable and long-term payments, the foundation said.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Just about the same number (63.3 percent) said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has the resolve to carry out reforms, but 23 percent of respondents thought otherwise, the survey found.
The government’s proposal to raise the pension contributions of employees from 12 percent to 18 percent was supported by 54 percent of respondents, while 35.5 percent disagreed with the idea, and 61.8 percent backed a formula based on the average salary of the final 15 years of employment, while 22.1 percent disapproved, the foundation said.
Analyzing the results along occupational lines, 84.6 percent of public-sector employees — military personnel, civil servants and public-school teachers — and 70.8 percent of private-sector workers said the pension system needs to be revised.
Among public-sector employees, 53.8 percent support the phase-out of the 18 percent preferential interest rate on retired civil servants’ savings, but less than 50 percent supported a “pension ceiling” or increasing their pension contributions, the foundation said.
The survey found there is room for improvement in explaining the government’s proposals: 58.4 percent of respondent said they understood the reform plans, but 40.2 percent of respondents said they did not, and while 71.1 percent said they knew the pensions fund might go bankrupt between 2027 and 2031, only 42.9 percent knew that the government’s proposals would delay bankruptcy to between 2036 and 2044.
The survey found strong support for proposals to scrap job-specific pension privileges, with 79.3 percent of respondents supporting the cancelation of the 18 percent preferential interest rate and 79.4 percent backing adjusting the 13 percent interest rate for former employees of state-run banks.
When asked about retired civil servants who were able to count the time they worked as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials toward their total years in service, more than three-quarters (77.3 percent) of respondents supported such pension privileges, and 85.6 percent backed canceling the preferential interest rates for political appointees who served as civil servants, and 83.4 percent backed reducing the income replacement ratios for judicial officers.
“Contrary to what was thought to be massive objections to the government’s pension reform proposals, the survey found a mostly positive reaction, especially for potentially contentious issues such as raising pension contributions and the phase-out of preferential interest rates,” Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) said.
“The survey indicates an emerging divergence among vested interest groups,” Citizen’s Congress Watch executive director Chen Chien-fu (陳建甫) said.
“Public-sector employees used to be seen as a unified group that could not be bent, but disagreements are beginning to surface within this group, especially along generational lines,” Chen said.
The government released its pension reform proposals on Thursday last week and the survey was conducted on Thursday and Friday.
A total of 1,018 valid samples were collected and the survey has a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 3.07 percentage points.
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and accompanying warships were in the Philippines yesterday after holding combat drills with Philippine forces in the disputed South China Sea in a show of firepower that would likely antagonize China. The Charles de Gaulle on Friday docked at Subic Bay, a former US naval base northwest of Manila, for a break after more than two months of deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. The French carrier engaged with security allies for contingency readiness and to promote regional security, including with Philippine forces, navy ships and fighter jets. They held anti-submarine warfare drills and aerial combat training on Friday in
COMBAT READINESS: The military is reviewing weaponry, personnel resources, and mobilization and recovery forces to adjust defense strategies, the defense minister said The military has released a photograph of Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) appearing to sit beside a US general during the annual Han Kuang military exercises on Friday last week in a historic first. In the photo, Koo, who was presiding over the drills with high-level officers, appears to be sitting next to US Marine Corps Major General Jay Bargeron, the director of strategic planning and policy of the US Indo-Pacific Command, although only Bargeron’s name tag is visible in the seat as “J5 Maj General.” It is the first time the military has released a photo of an active
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
RSS