The recently formed Alliance of Justice and Fairness, or the pan-purple alliance, yesterday presented its population policy, proposing ways to deal with the aging population and encouraging the government to give more rights to the foreign wives of Taiwanese men.
The alliance warned the public that their retirement plans were being jeopardized by the declining birth rate.
Alliance spokesman Wu Chung-tai (
Wu also presented government figures showing that the proportion of people aged 65 and over was set to rise from 8.8 percent of the total population in 2001 to 10 percent in 2007 and to 20 percent by 2025.
"Soon, increasingly numerous elderly citizens will be without enough children to support them, and the country does not provide them with a sound pension and care system. [Ensuring] a dignified life in retirement will become a serious challenge," Wu said.
Alliance convener Chien Hsi-chieh (
"Having children should be everyone's basic right, but now many Taiwanese dare not have children because of their poor living standards and the lack of a social security network. The responsibility for child care falls mainly on families, yet private child care and education are expensive," Chien said.
The alliance also expressed its concerns over so-called foreign brides -- women from Southeast Asia and China who marry Taiwanese men.
The alliance said the first step to help these women should be to describe them as "new female immigrants" instead of "foreign brides."
They also appealed to the government to establish comprehensive immigration policies and set up a department of immigration to deal with issues such as employment, education and social welfare for the women and their children.
"Last year these new female immigrants made up 25.9 percent of the women who got married in Taiwan, and the children that were born to immigrants made up 12.46 percent of total newborns," said Wu Wei-ting (伍維婷), CEO of the Awakening Foundation (婦女新知基金會), a member of the alliance.
"However, the government considers these women the responsibility, or liability, of individual families and refuses to give them the rights to which they are entitled," she said.
Wu Wei-ting urged the government to cancel the unreasonable limitations on the work rights of such immigrants, saying they should be entitled to all the rights listed in the Labor Standards Law (
She also suggested that the problem of domestic violence that many of these women face should be dealt with separately. Furthermore, when they divorce their husbands, courts should not always give the children to the husbands and the government should help ensure that the women are given visitation rights if they lose custody of the children.
The alliance, which was founded earlier this month, consists of well-known social groups and seeks to highlight a number of social issues in the run-up to the presidential election next year.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
RSS