With labor unions for teachers set to be established for the first time in Taiwan starting next month, the Ministry of Education is now planning to place an upper limit on the daily working hours of educators. But parent groups as well as teachers themselves have both found the proposal implausible.

Currently, there are no regulations on how many hours teachers in elementary and junior high school need to work in a day at school.

But the draft of Teachers Law recently passed by the Education and Culture Committee of the Legislature stipulates that such teachers need to fulfill the duty of eight hours a day and five days a week.

National Alliance of Parents Organization questions if teachers spend eight hours at school, what happens if children need them besides work hours?

What if it's on winter and summer vacation?

National Teachers' Association believes that to include teachers' working hours in the law is nothing but a farce and a sataboge to education.

The association believes the Ministry of Education cannot make such decision unilaterally and it would appeal a group negotiation.

Ministry of Education responds that it would invite related groups to discuss a proper set of responding measures such as overtime pay and other issues, hoping to implement the fixed work hour system on August first.