"4 out of 10 Citizens Say Preferential Treatment for Returning Parental Leave Workers Needed to Solve Low Birthrate"

Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, Results of the Gukmin Saenggakham Survey

Four out of ten citizens believe that preferential treatment for employees returning from parental leave is necessary to address the low birthrate issue.

On the 19th, the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) announced that in a survey conducted on the People’s Idea Platform from the 12th to the 25th of last month regarding the selection of key tasks for institutional improvement in 2024, the “preferential personnel treatment for public officials returning from parental leave” was identified as the most important task in the field of improving low birthrate and childcare environments.

The ACRC comprehensively considered complaints received through various channels such as the People’s Petition System and the 110 government civil complaint call center over recent years, as well as national policy tasks, and identified a total of 30 institutional improvement tasks across 7 fields. A total of 5,966 people participated in this survey, including 2,083 citizen panel members and 3,883 general citizens.

Among the 7 fields, 22.7% of all respondents selected livelihood stability and economic revitalization as the area requiring priority promotion. This was followed by improvement of low birthrate and childcare environments (21.8%) and prevention of corruption and budget waste (13.4%). Other proposals included ▲expansion of the elementary school childcare system to all grades ▲relief of regional subscriber burdens in calculating health insurance premiums and national pension contributions ▲flexible operation of school zone speed enforcement cameras by time of day.

An ACRC official stated, “This survey was a valuable opportunity to grasp the public’s requests and wishes regarding overall government policies,” adding, “We will reasonably adjust the direction of institutional improvements this year to align with the public’s perspective.”

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