The welfare allowance (pension) system for elderly farmers had two major loopholes: First, some people could buy farmland and work it for only a short time; thereby allowing them to join the farmers' health insurance (FHI) program, and, after only six months in the FHI, to thereby qualify for the welfare allowance (pension). Secondly, people who had long moved overseas were still able to share in the resources for the pension plan.

　　On July 16 of 2014, amendments were promulgated to the Provisional Act Governing the Welfare Allowance for Elderly Farmers, with the following effect: Applicants for the pension plan have to show that they have participated in FHI for 15 years rather than six months. (Note that people who were already receiving the welfare allowance prior to this change are unaffected by it.) Persons who joined FHI prior to this change and continue to participate until age 65 fall under the following rule: In cases where FHI participation exceeds six months but is less than 15 years, the person shall receive half the pension (i.e. NT$3,500). Those whose FHI participation reaches 15 years will be issued the full allowance (i.e. NT$7,000). In addition, persons applying for the pension must have their legal domicile in Taiwan, and have spent at least 183 days per year of each of the last three years in the country, in order to receive the allowance.

　　These amendments to the pension system ensure that implementation will be limited to the actual legislative intent of the law—to ensure the well- being of resident long-time farmers as they age. It also provides for people who switched professions to farming late in life, guaranteeing them basic rights to an allowance. It is estimated that these amendments will save NT$46 billion over the next 15 years. The money for this plan is used in tasks like: (a) assisting farmers in improving their facilities and equipment for production, (b) ensuring the safety of agro- products in both the production and marketing stages, and (c) guiding young farmers in managing and operating their farms. These measures will raise the competitiveness of Taiwan's agricultural sector and help even more farmers to improve their lives.

　　To ensure that those who participate in FHI are in fact genuinely engaged in farming work, the COA has strengthened measures for reviewing and investigating FHI qualifications, including the following: (a) For new applications to join FHI, the local town government will, jointly with the local farmers' associations, do case-by-case on-site inspections where the farmer claims to be farming. (b) We have increased the number of civil servants participating in the work of reviewing FHI qualifications. (c) We have created a new mechanism for review and approval of FHI qualifications. (d) We have completed a plan for constructing a data management system for welfare benefits for farmers, which can be cross-referenced with data from the domicile-registration and land- registration systems, in order to more efficiently review insurance qualifications. The number of persons newly joining FHI fell from about 2000 per month in 2013 to about 700 per month in 2014.

　　The COA has also moved to ensure that people already enrolled in FHI but whose qualifications do not meet the legal requirements cannot continue to consume FHI resources. We have linked, inspected, and compared domicile-registration, land-registration, and other relevant data, and provided the results to all local governments. They, in turn, have given this data to all the local level farmers' associations to implement their legally defined tasks of verifying qualifications for FHI and removing the unqualified from FHI. By using criteria of (i) persons who were participating in both FHI and Labor Insurance (a separate program for workers) in excess of 180 days, (ii) legal domicile, (iii) land ownership, (iv) long-term residence overseas, (v) persons serving prison sentences, and (vi) persons about to become 65 years old, as of the end of 2014 we were able to remove 70,379 unqualified persons from the FHI.