Latest news with #socialwelfare
The National
2 days ago
- Business
- The National
President Sheikh Mohamed waives Dh140m in debt for Emiratis
President Sheikh Mohamed on Wednesday waived the debts of 222 Emiratis, amounting to more than Dh139.8 million, ahead of Eid Al Adha. The relief has been extended through the Defaulted Debts Settlement Fund, with beneficiaries including retirees and social support beneficiaries. The move is part of efforts to promote social welfare and development by easing financial burdens, state news agency Wam reported. Debts totalling about Dh86.4 million will be waived for 132 retirees, while 90 citizens will be exempted under the social support category from repaying debts amounting to Dh53.4 million. The move follows a similar waiving of debts announced before the UAE's 53rd National Day last year. At the time, debts worth Dh401 million were cleared for 1,277 Emiratis.
Irish Times
27-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
RTÉ pays out €4m tied to misclassification of some staff as self-employed
RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst is expected to tell a Dáil committee on Wednesday that the broadcaster has to date handed over more than €4 million in unpaid social welfare contributions related to the misclassification of some workers in the organisation as self-employed contractors. The former BBC News editor will update the Committee on the Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport on a range of issues at the broadcaster, including a process to settle the employment status of around 700 workers. According to a copy of his opening remarks seen by The Irish Times, Mr Bakhurst is expected to say that RTÉ has made payments of €1.1 million to the Revenue Commissioners to date relating to an audit of its finances that began last year. In the appendix to his remarks submitted ahead of Wednesday's meeting, RTÉ noted a €3.2 million settlement to the Department of Social Protection relating to its review of some 655 alleged cases of Pay Related Social Insurance (PRSI) misclassification at the broadcaster. READ MORE [ RTÉ confirms €3.6m write down on partly abandoned IT project Opens in new window ] Mr Bakhurst is expected to tell the committee that the department has reviewed 82 per cent of the cases and found that 60 per cent, or 388, were correctly classified as contractors. Some 124 cases, or 18 per cent of the total, remain outstanding, according to the documents submitted to the committee. In recent years, RTÉ set aside some €22.6 million as a provision to cover the cost of potential PRSI settlements and penalties. The total provision had fallen to just €21 million at the end of April, according to the documents. Mr Bakhurst is also expected to tell the committee that any move to completely abandon a troubled IT project and switch to a new supplier in the middle of its delivery would have cost the broadcaster at least €3 million. [ RTÉ spends nearly €75,000 appealing findings against broadcaster in bogus self-employment cases Opens in new window ] RTÉ ultimately took a €3.7 million financial hit on the partially abandoned project to replace its legacy finance and human resources system. The broadcaster said at the time that the impairments were noted in its annual accounts during the years 2020 to 2023. Mr Bakhurst said at the time that he was not aware of the write-down until March, when details were shared with media minister Patrick O'Donovan as part of a wider review of capital projects, initiated after the controversy over the Arts Council's spending on a botched IT project. Mr Bakhurst will reiterate to the committee that the project was an 'outlier' in a 'much larger portfolio' of capital projects. The review found that the 'total variance' from the initial budget for 39 large-scale projects undertaken by RTÉ since 2020 was less than €500 million, Mr Bakhurst is expected to say. The committee will also hear that 'any attempt to abandon the project' or switch to the runner-up supplier in the procurement process, 'would have immediately incurred an extra cost of at least €3 million'. Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland programme on Tuesday, media committee chairman and Labour Party TD Alan Kelly said some of the focus of Wednesday's session will be on the department because of the 'history' of similar issues at other bodies like the Arts Council. While he said the writedowns were noted in RTÉ's accounts, it was difficult to 'comprehend' the scale of the costs 'if you see it written off over a number of years'. Mr Kelly said the broadcaster may not have attempted to hide the issue, 'but certainly, there wasn't an attempt to make it very public'.
Washington Post
27-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Opioids, depression and drug prices: 9 readers share the health crises on their minds
Lee Hockstader's May 22 online column, 'Europe has so far dodged a U.S.-style opioid epidemic. Here's why.,' attributed the lack of an opioid crisis in Europe to that continent's universal health-care systems and stronger social welfare safety net. If those were true protections, then Canada, which has both of those systems, would not have an opioid crisis. But, as has been documented in many readily available reports, including the Stanford-Lancet Commission on the North American Opioid Crisis, of which I was chair, the opioid crisis in Canada is one of the worst in the world.
New York Times
23-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Does My Spouse Get a Say in Whether to Carry an Unplanned Pregnancy?
I'm 46, unexpectedly pregnant despite having entered perimenopause, with three children already (the youngest is 4). My husband calls this a 'disaster,' and believes abortion is the clear choice because we didn't want another child or plan on this pregnancy. I feel differently. Though I am pro-choice, the idea of terminating a pregnancy makes me deeply uncomfortable, and I'm afraid I would regret it. He thinks I'm hung up on the moral question. But doesn't that indicate that keeping the pregnancy is the more moral option? (We live in a European country where abortion at this stage is legal, so access is not an issue.) I'm taking the long view: Looking back at the end of my life, would I really regret one of my children? My husband's arguments are that a baby will upend our professional lives, that he doesn't want to return to the exhaustion and social isolation of early parenthood and that he's unwilling to take on a full-time caregiver role again. We each work in a precarious field — humanities research and the arts — and it's true we can't predict how another child might affect our work. But I find myself wondering: Will I even remember, let alone regret, a 'lost' year of work when I'm older? We have a stable family, as well as access to the financial benefits afforded to families living in a social-welfare state. Choosing to end this pregnancy feels like a decision based on short-term disruption, and that seems too small a reason. Recently, our circle of friends has experienced real tragedies: the sudden death of a young mother, a severe stroke, the loss of a baby carried to term. These, to me, are true 'disasters' — not an unplanned pregnancy. My husband's most powerful argument (though it's more a feeling than a rationale) is that he feels angry and powerless. As someone who writes about agency and its absence in historical lives, I genuinely empathize with him. Any thoughts to help guide us? — Name Withheld From the Ethicist: Having a child — even when you've already had children — is what the philosopher Edna Ullmann-Margalit called a 'big decision': one that transforms you, one you can't take back and one in which, as she put it, 'the choice not made casts a lingering shadow.' What's transformed is not just your life but also a landscape of values: You come to care about someone whose existence previously wasn't part of your world. And that care can be deep, irreversible and defining. You already know this. That's why, when your husband calls the prospect of another child a 'disaster,' the word feels inapt. You've seen real disasters, and this doesn't feel comparable. He's worried about disruption: the toll on careers, on sleep, on a hard-won sense of stability. These are legitimate concerns. But you don't see them as permanent in the way that having a child is. Two realities, then, are pressing in at once. First, the decision is ultimately yours; it's your body and you alone can decide whether you're comfortable having an abortion. Second, it's a decision that will reshape a shared life, and your husband has a stake in that reshaping. He's not wrong to feel conscripted into something momentous without his consent. Your decision has layers, too. Although you think that abortion can sometimes be justified, you sense that it involves a moral dimension, even if you're unsure what that dimension entails. Psychological unease can linger when we act under moral uncertainty — not because the act is necessarily wrong but because we fear it might be. And this complication wraps around a question that's deeply personal. You're asking: Can I bring myself to step away from this surprising future that has suddenly opened up before me — perhaps for the last time? What has weight for you is the sense that you're unlikely to regret this child, even decades from now. And yet 'regret' isn't the real axis of decision. Many women who choose abortion believe it was the right decision, and still understand that, had the child been born, the love and meaning the child would have brought to their lives would have been real. Like them, you're choosing between two different futures: One contains a person whose life you will shape and be shaped by; the other preserves space, energy and attention for the people and commitments already in your life. Your doctors will have told you that at your age, you face elevated risks of miscarriage and of chromosomal abnormalities. There's no guarantee the path ahead will be smooth, or even viable. That uncertainty can make the future feel both more fragile and more urgent. Wanting to sustain this pregnancy means acknowledging such risks and still feeling the pull. Your husband's concerns, meanwhile, deserve real acknowledgment. He believed this phase of life was behind him, and the prospect of reliving it without any say in the decision is understandably distressing. Even if you separated, this child would still affect him, materially and emotionally. His frustration, you make clear, isn't just about sleep or workload; it's about agency. In a shared life, that matters. But in a shared life, it's also true that sometimes one person feels something the other doesn't — at least not yet. And still, you go forward together. That process may take time. It may involve grief, friction, adaptation. The hope isn't perfect agreement. It's that mutual care persists, even when agreement falters. Ullmann-Margalit wrote that big decisions transform us not just because of what they require but because of how they realign our sense of meaning. You're in the midst of that realignment now. You are choosing between two possible lives — each with its own appeal, its own costs. You find yourself at a threshold. And whatever lies on the other side, you'll meet it as the person this decision is already helping you become. Readers Respond The previous question was from a federal worker grappling with whether to retire from a job in a department where co-workers are potentially facing layoffs. The reader wrote: 'I am a federal employee who is eligible for retirement. I have a job that is intellectually challenging, gives back to the public and is personally rewarding. As federal government employees in my department face potential layoffs, is it ethical for me to defer retirement? There would be no negative impact for me in retiring, and I am certain I would be offered other jobs because of my expertise.' In his response, the Ethicist noted: 'You may believe that retiring would spare someone else from being laid off, but in reality, it's hard to know whether your departure would do so. Work-force reductions are typically complex, and the ripple effects of one departure are difficult to predict. 'Your continued service has worth — to you and to the agency. The presence of someone skilled, experienced and committed to public service could strengthen the agency, at a time when the federal work force faces unprecedented strain. Staying can help stabilize the 'hip of state' — an important benefit in these turbulent times.' (Reread the full question and answer here.) ⬥ I am a retired federal executive who works for a government contractor in D.C. Numerous friends and business contacts of mine have thought about doing the same thing, and they've been told that their retirement would not ensure retention of their position for a more junior federal employee. — Bob ⬥ I was a federal employee for 30 years. What often happens when an agency is downsizing is that a position left vacant after a retirement is just left vacant, even if the work done by the retiree is important. No one is spared getting laid off. I would recommend that if the reader thinks their job is important, and they are otherwise happy with it, they should stay put. There's no guarantee that retirement will save anyone else's job, and it could leave important work undone. — Robert ⬥ Some agencies have hard numbers of employees that need to be cut, and they plan to do so in order of seniority. In those cases, the departure of a worker with few remaining years may leave space for younger workers with more time to dedicate to the mission. If that is the case at your agency, think hard about your other options and what your agency needs. Staying now might leave your agency with fewer experts in the long run. — Craig ⬥ Do what feels right to you. If you feel unsafe about your job position, by all means, take the retirement. No one should judge you, and, as you said, you'd probably be able to find a similar position elsewhere. If you don't feel threatened, then continue working until you don't feel secure in your position, or until you simply don't want to work. — Zach ⬥ I hope the federal worker defers retirement and continues to work — to provide continuity and stability during a time of extreme instability. — Katherine ⬥ There is really no way to know, and in this case, I suspect everyone being targeted could still be let go. What the person could do is provide insights or mentoring to those who might be at risk on how to make themselves more valuable in the workplace. — Robert
Free Malaysia Today
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Fury in Penang assembly as exco blasts fellow party rep over ‘leaked' reply
State exco member Lim Siew Khim (left) said Batu Lanchang assemblyman Ong Ah Teong's remarks were based on an incomplete answer prematurely uploaded to the assembly's portal. GEORGE TOWN : A Penang executive councillor tore into a fellow DAP backbencher after the latter accused her of dodging a question on the operations of the state's homeless shelter, sparking a rare open clash at the state assembly. State social development and welfare committee chairman Lim Siew Khim lambasted Ong Ah Teong (PH-Batu Lanchang) for citing an official response, which she said had not yet been formally answered in the assembly. The response pertained to Ong's oral question on the operations and costs of the Jalan CY Choy homeless transit centre. He had brought up this subject to raise concerns over financial transparency and staffing expenses. He said the centre's RM598,610 annual operating cost was excessive, with over 67% spent only on the salaries for its seven staff. However, Lim said Ong's remarks were based on an incomplete answer prematurely uploaded to the assemblyman's portal, which she had not yet had the opportunity to address. She accused Ong of misleading the assembly and going against protocol. Oral answers are only shared publicly and with the assemblyman posing the question after being read out in the assembly to make sure everyone obtains the information at the same time and in the right order. 'This is about ethics as a wakil rakyat. You have been here for two terms. The question has not reached its turn, yet YB Batu Lanchang cited a half-complete answer to accuse me of failing to respond. That's a serious allegation,' Lim said. She also rejected Ong's claim that the centre had received public or NGO cash donations. 'The centre only accepts donations in kind, like clothes and food. If there's any evidence otherwise, submit a formal report. If not, withdraw your statement,' she said. When Ong tried to explain that he had based his remarks on the official reply from her via the assembly's internal portal, Lim raised her voice and repeatedly told him to sit down. The confrontation prompted speaker Law Choo Kiang to step in, saying the prematurely uploaded answer was due to a clerical error by the assembly secretariat, which he said he 'deeply regrets'. 'There was an unintentional error by our secretariat. Normally, replies are only uploaded (to after being formally answered. 'In this case, all oral answers were prematurely uploaded to the portal,' he said. Law said the system error had since been rectified and thanked both lawmakers for flagging the issue. Chief minister Chow Kon Yeow also weighed in, backing Lim and calling on the speaker to order a full probe into the error. He said it was only right for Ong to apologise. Fellow executive councillor Daniel Gooi rose on a point of order, saying Ong should not only apologise but also retract his remarks as they amounted to accusing another member of acting in bad faith. Ong later apologised and withdrew his comments, saying he did not wish to further disrupt the sitting.
