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.
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79
RSS