Day: April 8, 2022

The number of workers on unpaid leave in Taiwan fell by more than 3,000 in the first week of April, but it is likely to rise again soon, as employers renew their formal furlough programs, the Ministry of Labor (MOL) said Friday.

According to MOL data, the number of workers on furlough as of April 7 was 12,198, a decrease of 3,353 from a week earlier.

Meanwhile, the number of companies with formal furlough programs as of April 7 fell by 437 from a week earlier to 2,008, the data indicated.

Huang Wei-chen (???), director of the MOL’s Department of Labor Standards and Equal Employment, told reporters that the decline in both numbers reflected the fact that the furlough programs of some travel agencies, airlines and logistics operators had expired during the past week.

Those employers, however, are likely to apply to the MOL for extension of their unpaid leave programs, Huang said, citing slow business in those areas due to Taiwan’s border controls amid the COVID-10 pandemic.

Another factor that contributed to the drop in furlough numbers over the past week was a decision by a textile manufacturer to call back more than 100 employees who had been on unpaid leave, as the company saw an increase in orders, Huang said.

In the wider manufacturing sector, the number of furloughed workers in the week ending April 7 fell to 797 from 1,100, according to the MOL.

The support service industry, which largely comprises travel agencies, also saw a decline, from 9,148 to 7,637, while in the transportation and logistics industry the number dropped to 1,024 from 1,561 a week earlier, the data showed.

The number of furloughed workers in the retail and wholesale industry fell from 1,143 to 795, according to the MOL data.

Looking ahead, Huang said the current daily increase in the number of domestic COVID-19 cases may affect the local job market in the near term.

The MOL updates its furloughed worker data on the 1st, 8th, 16th, and 24th of every month, reporting unpaid leave numbers at companies that have registered their furlough programs with the ministry.

Most of the enterprises implementing furlough programs are small firms that employ fewer than 50 people.

The unpaid leave programs typically last for less than three months, with employees taking five to eight days of unpaid leave per month, according to the MOL.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

Peng Ming-min (???), a political dissident turned presidential candidate whose life mirrored Taiwan’s transition from an authoritarian state to a democracy, has died at the age of 98.

The Peng Ming-min Foundation confirmed that Peng passed away peacefully at 5:55 a.m. on Friday, but it did not mention the cause of death.

Under Peng’s will, there will be no funeral of any kind, and after he is cremated, Peng’s ashes will be buried at a cemetery affiliated with the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan in Kaohsiung’s Yancheng District, the foundation said.

Peng was imprisoned under the authoritarian Chiang Kai-shek (???) regime in the 1960s for advocating democracy and Taiwan’s independence from China, but he managed to escape to Sweden in 1970 while under house arrest and remained in exile for more than two decades.

He returned to Taiwan in 1992 and made an unsuccessful run for president in 1996, but later served as an advisor to then President Chen Shui-bian (???) from 2000 to 2006.

President Tsai Ing-wen (???) said she was saddened by Peng’s death and described him as not only a renowned legal scholar but also a trailblazer in Taiwan’s democracy movement, Presidential Office spokesman Xavier Chang (???) said in a statement Friday.

The president said she will remember Peng’s lifelong contributions to promoting and safeguarding democracy and freedom in Taiwan, the statement said.

Born in Taichung in August 1923, Peng graduated from National Taiwan University (NTU) in 1948 with a bachelor’s degree in political science.

He subsequently acquired his master and doctoral degrees in law at McGill University in Canada in 1953 and at the University of Paris in 1954, respectively.

Peng returned to Taiwan to teach at NTU after completing his studies in France. Chiang’s regime tried to groom him to become an official in the Kuomintang (KMT) government in the early 1960s, but he instead became an outspoken democracy activist.

He was arrested in 1964 for a manifesto he published with two of his students, Hsieh Tsung-min (???) and Wei Ting-chao (???), stating that Taiwan and China were separate nations and that Taiwan’s future should be decided by its people.

Peng was convicted of sedition and sentenced to eight years in jail in 1965, but his case drew worldwide attention and, facing international pressure, the Chiang government discharged Peng from prison 14 months later.

He was immediately put under house arrest and remained under intense surveillance until managing his dramatic escape to Sweden with the help of others that he wrote about in detail in a memoir in 2009.

While overseas, Peng spent much of his time in the United States and co-founded the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) in 1981, which continues to lobby the U.S. Congress and policymakers on issues of importance to Taiwan to this day.

Peng returned to Taiwan in 1992 and ran for president in 1996 as a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate in Taiwan’s first direct presidential election.

He finished second in a four-way race to then-President Lee Teng-hui (???), who was representing the KMT.

Peng later became a senior advisor to Chen Shui-bian of the DPP after Chen won the presidency in 2000 and remained in that position until 2006.

He was less active after that, while still maintaining a voice on public affairs.

In December 2011, Peng became the chairman of the International Committee for Fair Elections in Taiwan, a group formed to ensure free and fair presidential and legislative elections in 2012 by inviting foreign politicians and scholars to Taiwan to observe the vote.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

Deterrence by denial is the best strategy for defending Taiwan, and it can be helped by the United States as is being done in Ukraine in fighting off Russia’s invasion, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said Thursday.

“Taiwan is a defensible island. We just need to help the Taiwanese to defend it a little bit better,” Milley said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the 2023 U.S. defense budget in response to a question from Senator Rick Scott on whether the proposed 2023 funding was enough to deter China’s military expansion.

He noted that “the best defense of Taiwan is done by the Taiwanese” with U.S. support, and that the key to deterrence was to “make sure that the Chinese know that if they were to attack Taiwan, it’s a very, very difficult objective to take.”

Milley believed there were several lessons coming out of Ukraine that China has taken very seriously, including the challenges of conducting an amphibious or air assault on Taiwan with its millions of people.

In his written testimony, Milley said China has and continues to develop significant nuclear, space, cyber, land, air, and maritime military capabilities, and that “they are working every day to close the technology gap with the U.S. and its allies.”

“In short, they remain intent on fundamentally revising the global international order in their favor by mid-century, they intend to be a military peer of the U.S. by 2035, and they intend to develop the military capabilities to seize Taiwan by 2027,” Milley said.

Also responding to a question asked by Scott, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin defended the spending proposal, saying its focus on investments in such areas as technology, cyberspace, and undersea capabilities would help with deterring China and confronting the existing challenge of Russia.

He said the U.S. considered China to be “a now and forever problem in terms of a challenge” that will evolve over time.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

A mud volcano erupted near a local temple in Wandan Township in Pingtung County on Friday morning, heaving large amounts of mud above ground that flowed into surrounding roads and fields.

The eruption, the second by the volcano since October 2021, occurred at around 6 a.m. near Huang Yuan Sheng Tien (????), a temple surrounded by farmland in Wannei Village in the eastern part of the county near Kaohsiung.

The bursts reached as high as a one-story building, and to keep the mud from further spreading into nearby rice paddies, excavators were mobilized to channel mud toward drainage ditches, Wannei Village chief Chen Yu-i (???) told CNA.

Normally a fire would be lit to accelerate the release of natural gas, but because this eruption occurred close to the temple, the village decided to let the gas release on its own without igniting a fire, Chen said.

The Wandan mud volcano usually erupts one to three times a year, with the eruptions mostly occurring in Wannei or other nearby villages.

About 90 minutes after the mud volcano erupted, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake shook the county, and some wondered if the two natural phenomenons were connected.

Central Weather Bureau Seismological Center Director Chen Kuo-chang (???) said the two events were unrelated because they occurred far from each other and were triggered by different reasons.

Chen said the earthquake was centered in waters 30 kilometers off the coast of Eluanbi, Taiwan’s southernmost point, at a point more than 100 kilometers from Wannei, and occurred because of the subsidence and compression of tectonic plates near the Pingtung submarine ridge.

The mud volcano event, he said, was a relatively shallow geological event resulting from natural gas flowing through underground crevices and reacting chemically with groundwater and rocks to form the boiling mud, and was not related to the seismic events over 100 km away, Chen said.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel