An attorney representing a credit card debtor self-help group on Friday urged the legislature to pass an amendment that would establish a clear set of criteria to help courts determine whether debt holders can reduce or clear their debts.
Lin Yung-sung (林永頌), a lawyer and consultant for the self-help group, said at a press conference that while Japan has clear evaluation criteria for judges to follow, Taiwan’s Consumer Debt Clearance Act (消費者債務清理條例) is vague, leaving it open to arbitrary rulings that are usually favorable to creditors.
Lin said Taiwan’s approval rate for debt settlement applications — an approach to debt reduction — stands at 24 percent and that of debt exemption applications is less than 10 percent, compared with more than 90 percent in Japan.
He urged passage of a proposed revision submitted by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Chieh-ju (陳節如), saying that it would help raise approval rates for the reduction of credit card debt. Lin said the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) had proposed a competing version of the amendment, but he described it as still being relatively vague on criteria to decide such cases.
Chikako Akita, one of two Japanese lawyers Lin invited to the press conference to share Japan’s experience in consumer debt clearance, said that in her country, after debtors file for bankruptcy, their lifestyles are observed by a bankruptcy trustee who then files a report on their behavior with the court.
Akita said more than 90 percent of applications for debt exemptions are approved in Japan because the judges consider not only the opinions of the creditor, but also the report from the debt trustee.
Aside from the trustee’s report, she said there was also a clear system for judges to evaluate granting a debt exemption that focuses on the intentions and attitudes of the debtors and the need for the exemption, as well as the original reasons behind their borrowing.
Tatsuya Kimura, a lawyer and the representative secretary of Credit and Salakin Taikyo, Japan, a national coalition for fair consumer credit, said the credit card debt issue was prevalent in Japan, the US and Europe, but there was now an understanding that debtors are not the only ones to be blamed for excesses.
Kimura said some of the causes of credit card debt are poverty, unemployment and underemployment — situations that are not necessarily the fault of an individual. He said it took about 30 years for activists to change the outlook of Japan’s relatively conservative judges and help debtors get a second chance.
Lin participated in two 44-hour hunger strikes in front of the Legislative Yuan from last Sunday to Tuesday and from Tuesday to Thursday with anti-poverty groups.
The sit-in protests were led by Anti-Poverty Alliance founder Chien Hsi-chieh. Chien on Thursday called on the government to quickly pass amendments to the country’s housing, student loan and consumer debt clearance laws to help the nation’s 800,000 credit card debtors, 400,000 student loan holders and salaried employees who have difficulty affording increasingly expensive housing in the country.
Global bodies should stop excluding Taiwan for political reasons, President William Lai (賴清德) told Pope Francis in a letter, adding that he agrees war has no winners. The Vatican is one of only 12 countries to retain formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and Taipei has watched with concern efforts by Beijing and the Holy See to improve ties. In October, the Vatican and China extended an accord on the appointment of Catholic bishops in China for four years, pointing to a new level of trust between the two parties. Lai, writing to the pope in response to the pontiff’s message on Jan. 1’s
A Vietnamese migrant worker on Thursday won the NT$12 million (US$383,590) jackpot on a scratch-off lottery ticket she bought from a lottery shop in Changhua County’s Puyan Township (埔鹽), Taiwan Lottery Co said yesterday. The lottery winner, who is in her 30s and married, said she would continue to work in Taiwan and send her winnings to her family in Vietnam to improve their life. More Taiwanese and migrant workers have flocked to the lottery shop on Sec 2 of Jhangshuei Road (彰水路) to share in the luck. The shop owner, surnamed Chen (陳), said that his shop has been open for just
HOLIDAY EXERCISE: National forest recreation areas from north to south offer travelers a wide choice of sights to connect with nature and enjoy its benefits Hiking is a good way to improve one’s health, the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency said, as it released a list of national forest recreation areas that travelers can visit during the Lunar New Year holiday. Taking a green shower of phytoncides in the woods could boost one’s immunity system and metabolism, agency Director-General Lin Hwa-ching (林華慶) cited a Japanese study as saying. For people visiting northern Taiwan, Lin recommended the Dongyanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Taoyuan’s Fusing District (復興). Once an important plantation in the north, Dongyanshan (東眼山) has a number of historic monuments, he said. The area is broadly covered by
Tainan’s initiative to recruit digital nomads has resulted in several German, US and Vietnamese nationals applying to live and work in the city, the Tainan Research, Development and Evaluation Commission said yesterday. That marked the city as the first in the nation to attract digital nomads, following the launch of the program last month, it said. Although all applicants so far have used work visas or tourism visas instead of the special digital nomad permit from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the city government believes that the latter would be needed eventually, the commission said. The digital nomads recruited by Tainan would work
RSS