The Cabinet yesterday announced it would limit monetary transfers made through automatic teller machines (ATM) to NT$30,000 a day after the government came under fire for the Ministry of the Interior's (MOI) announcement that the limit would be set at NT$10,000 a day.
Speaking on behalf of Premier Frank Hsieh (
Starting from June 1, money transfers will be limited to NT$30,000 a day, the statement said. However, transfers for utility payments, tax payments and for specially designated payments or bank accounts will not be restricted.
The MOI the FSC and the Cabinet began receiving a deluge of complaints about the previously proposed restriction of NT$10,000, which had been scheduled to take effect on April 20 due to an increasing number of ATM fraud cases.
"We support our fellow Cabinet members' efforts to stop the fraud cases. However, we must also pay attention to the voice of the people," Cho said.
"The premier said that the previous announcement by the MOI and the FSC was not well organized before it was made public, and that Cabinet members should be more careful in the future."
Cho said that Hsieh held a meeting with related Cabinet members and decided to re-consider the limitation yesterday afternoon.
"Statistics show that most of the ATM money transfers -- about 84.53 percent of them -- are under NT$30,000. As a result, we decided to put the new limitation at NT$30,000 so it will not bother too many people," Cho said.
In the meantime, Cho also encouraged the public to sign up for automated bill payments.
"If everybody signs up for automatic payments, all our monthly bills will be taken care of automatically, and it will save us a lot of difficulty as well," he said.
In the meantime, Kong said that making life more convenient for people will always be a priority for the government, so he would also ask local banks to mail related documents to their clients so they will be able to sign up for automatic payments.
"Long lines are expected at local banks once the new limitation takes effect," Kong said. "To save more time for everybody, we will ask banks to do the registration by mail."
Su said it was definitely necessary to impose the new limitation on ATM money transfers because the police had received reports of approximately 110 fraud cases, totalling NT$300 million, per day involving transfers.
"Police investigations show that most of the suspects of ATM fraud cases committed crimes in China. Unfortunately, we can do nothing about this at the moment, since we do not have jurisdiction in China," Su said.
"For our part, we will keep working on a plan to work with Chinese law enforcement officers so we will be able to arrest these people and bring them back for trial in the future."
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