The Ministry of Health and Welfare is to propose a seniority reward program granting residential care facility workers an additional NT$5,000 (US$154) per month to boost employee retention, officials said at a meeting of the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee yesterday.
Saying that there is a shortage of 2,000 carers at long-term care institutions, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chang Yu-mei (張育美) asked ministry officials what the government is doing to address the problem.
Minister of Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) acknowledged that the industry faces difficulties in retaining workers, with many vocationally trained carers not staying in the field.
Photo: Liao Chen-hui, Taipei Times
The ministry has designed a NT$615 million four-year program to improve recruitment and retention, including a NT$5,000 monthly bonus for carers who have been employed for a full year at a residential care facility, he said.
The policy targeting people with degrees in care administration and young jobseekers is projected to increase the number of workers by 2,500 in an industry that currently employs 30,000 Taiwanese, he said.
Long-term care workers would also receive one week of on-the-job training focusing on skills dealing with onsite emergencies and pandemic outbreaks, Hsueh said.
Calculations for seniority starts one month after the completion of the one-week training at a facility and those who qualify could receive a monthly bonus for up to four years, said Chu Chien-fang (祝健芳), director-general of the ministry’s Department of Long-Term Care.
A subsidy for the administrative costs associated with the training and recruitment of carers would be provided to long-term care facilities, she said.
Carers who change jobs would still be eligible for the benefit if they transfer to another residential care facility and begin working within one month, Chu said.
No more than 10 percent of workers may take part in the training and seniority reward program in each facility to avoid overconcentration in some institutions at the expense of others, she said.
If approved by the Executive Yuan, the program could begin by the end of the year at the earliest and add 400 carers to the industry by January next year, department officials said.
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