Two bills to replace the Social Insurance Agency with a government corporation were set to be enacted in the early hours of Saturday morning, despite the opposition camp's last-ditch attempts to stop the vote in the House of Councilors.
The bills are a response to a number of problems at the government's public pension-handling body going back three years.
In 2004, it was discovered that the SIA had spent pension money for bureau- crats' housing and entertainment. Thousands of officials were punished in 2005 for taking peeks at the personal records of politicians and celebrities. Then the public learned last month that there are 50 million unidentified pension premium payments at the agency.