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Updated Tuesday, May 11, 2010 9:40 am TWN, The China Post news staff



	Legislator Chang Ching-chung, second left, is caught in the middle of an intense debate at the hearing of the Legislative Yuan's Education and Culture Committee, which he chaired. (CNA) Enlarge Photo

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Cross-strait bill passes 1st review

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Lawmakers from both parties clashed again on the hot button topic concerning the opening of Taiwan's schools and examination to residents from mainland China after legislator and chairman of the hearing Chang Ching-chung initiated the voting process to pass the draft amendment to the Cross-Strait People's Relation Act while the opposition and ruling party were in a stand still.

The amendment passed the first review amid confrontation of legislators from the Kuomintang and the opposition Democratic Progressive Party.

Mainland Chinese residents must obtain an ROC ID card to take civil service exams, and will have to wait for another 10 to 20 years to be able to work government jobs, said Tung Pao-cheng, deputy minister of the Ministry of Examination, yesterday.

Tung made the statement during a hearing of the Education and Culture Committee of the Legislative Yuan, fielding questions from DPP lawmaker Kuan Pi-ling, who sponsored a bill restricting people with education degrees from China from taking civil service exams, professional license exams and exams to become public school teachers.

To this, Tung said people with foreign education degrees should not be excluded from taking professional license exams. “Such examinations must be more international, and we should refrain from looking at this issue from a purely Taiwanese perspective,” he said.

However, he said for mainland Chinese people seeking to take civil service exams, they must obtain their ROC IDs first, which they may get only through marriage to Taiwan citizens or through the holding of Alien Resident Cards for a certain period of time.

Then, if they passed civil service exams, they have to wait for at least ten years — or, in the case of employment related to national security, 20 — before they can get a government job, he said.

For Taiwanese foreign education degree holders taking civil service exams, the examination board will require them to submit information on the schools they went to and the courses they took for the board's review, he added.

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