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Nearly 1 Million Workers Will Not Have Retirement Pension
By Shelley Shan, The China Post
Taiwan
August 23, 2005
Grace Kao is a freelance translator who is subcontracted by a translation firm and gets paid by the number of translation she does. Besides the fact that she is not a full-time employee and she gets to work at the comfort of her apartment, Kao is different from other employees in this country in one other thing: she has to earn every penny for her own retirement.
Based on regulations in the Labor Standards Act (LSA), Kao is one of the approximately one million employees whose jobs fall into the categories that are not covered by either the Labor Insurance Act or New Pension Scheme
According to the statistics by Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics(DGBAS), Taiwan has in total 9.92 million employees. Among these employees, only 5.74 million are covered by the New Pension Scheme. When deducting employees in the government, military and academia from the rest, about 1 million Taiwan employees are not qualified for either Labor Insurance or the New Pension Scheme.
The job categories in which Labor Standards Act do not apply, and thereby disqualified for the Labor Insurance or New Pension Scheme, include medical doctors, lawyers, accountants, athletes, coaches, referees and self-employed persons. The regulations in LSA also state that those employed by companies having fewer than four employees are not qualified for both benefits either.
Though not qualifying for any benefits as any regular employee, Kao was not concerned too much about her retirement.
"Those who are qualified for the New Pension Scheme do not have enough to support their lives after retirement anyway," Kao said, "As long as you have some plans for yourself in advance, you will be fine."
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