Taipei, July 3 (CNA) As the mercury continues to soar around Taiwan, a survey has found that more than six out of 10 employees are reluctant to go to work on particularly hot days and nearly 70 percent think the government should introduce rules to allow "heat leave," during excessively hot weather.
In the survey by yes123 job bank, 66.4 percent of respondents said they did not want to go to work when the weather is scorching hot.
The reasons given include the fact that hot weather makes people more fatigued (81.3 percent), impatient (78.7 percent) and angry (64.7 percent), as well as causing attention deficits (51.3 percent) and dizziness or headache (46.7 percent), according to the survey.
The poll indicates that 69.5 percent of employees think the government should introduce rules to permit "heat leave."
Of those who work outdoors, 82.3 percent said there should be a system of government subsidies to compensate them from working in extreme conditions.
However, a mere 18.6 percent of respondent companies supported "heat leave" and only 26.7 percent of surveyed businesses agreed "heat subsidies" were a good idea, the survey showed.
The survey was conducted between June 14 and June 29 among yes123 members aged 20 or above with a full-time job. A total of 1,356 valid samples were collected and the margin of error was plus or minus 2.66 percentage points.
A total of 860 valid samples were collected from enterprises, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.34 percentage points.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Insurance under the Ministry of Labor said from 2010 to May this year, five workers died from what were determined to be heat related problems after working in extreme temperatures.
In addition, seven employees applied for insurance payments for heat related injuries, such as heatstroke, heat cramp and heat exhaustion, after falling ill while working in high temperatures, the bureau said.
The bureau reiterated that workers suffering from heat related injuries are entitled to vocational hazard compensation under labor insurance regulations.
