Premier Yu Shyi-kun yesterday announced that Liu San-chi (
Yu said he believes Liu is highly qualified for the post given his extensive experience serving the department.
The premier said he had consulted President Chen Shui-bian (
Having served in the budget and accounting department for 27 years, Liu, 55, told the media that he is honored to take over the post and will work to allocate resources in the most efficient manner possible.
Acknowledging it as a tough task to distribute public funds, Liu said, "I will continue to play the `bad cop' [in performing the task] in a bid to make the best use of government funding."
The new chief praised the performance of his predecessor, saying the department's system was well designed under Lin's management. Liu said he will follow that system, adding that it had received the support of the premier.
Liu graduated from the accounting department of Soochow University. He has served as a section chief and the deputy head of the DGBAS. He has also acted as head of the accounting department of the Ministry of Education.
The Cabinet is undergoing a small reshuffle in the wake of the policy about-face on the reform of grassroots financial institutions last week.
Lin Chuan and Director of the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine Lee Chin-lung (李金龍) were appointed earlier this week as the new minister of finance and the chairman of the Council of Agriculture, respectively, to replace the outgoing Lee Yung-san (李庸三) and Fan Chen-tsung (范振宗).
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,