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KMT to lay off hundreds amid financial difficulties

ROC Central News Agency

2016/11/21 12:31:10

Taipei, Nov. 21 (CNA) The opposition Kuomintang (KMT) plans to lay off more than 400 employees as a result of its current financial predicament, an executive party member said on Monday.

The party has submitted an implementation plan to Taipei City Department of Labor as it is required to do two months before the planned lay-offs begin, KMT Administration and Management Committee Director Chiu Da-chan (邱大展) told reporters.

The plan indicates that severance compensation for those to be laid off and pensions for those who seek to retire will cost nearly NT$1.5 billion (US$46.9 million), he added.

Because of the the cost of the layoffs, the party will ask the government's Ill-Gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee to release some of the party's frozen funds to foot the bill, he said.

At Monday's press conference, Chiu said the KMT will lay off 738 employees before moving to re-hire 310 of them for jobs at party headquarters and branch offices, adding that discussions will be held with labor union representatives on the lay-off plan.

The veteran political party has faced financial difficulties since its main bank accounts were frozen and it was banned from trading in real estate and securities at the request of the Ill-Gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee, an special entity set up after the Democratic Progressive Party came to power in May.

The KMT, which relocated with the Republic of China government to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the civil war in China, held a majority in the Legislature until this year, after it lost both the presidential and legislative elections to the DPP in January.

As soon as the new government took power, it pushed through the Statute on Handling the Inappropriate Assets of Political Parties and Their Affiliated Organizations. That was followed by the establishment of the Ill-Gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee to handle the alleged "ill-gotten" assets of the KMT.

The committee was inaugurated on Aug. 31 and its first act was to freeze certain KMT bank accounts -- which the party says are mainly used to pay employees -- pending an investigation.

(By Claudia Liu and Elizabeth Hsu)
ENDITEM/AW