More than half of the country's diplomats hope that married couples serving simultaneously in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can be assigned to the same consulate so that they do not have to suffer longtime separation as a result of their careers, an official survey found.
Current ministry regulations stipulate that married couples who are both diplomats cannot stay in the same consulate. However, a survey conducted by the ministry's Research and Planning Committee showed that 56 percent of diplomats oppose the rule, which is meant to prevent corruption.
Whether couples who serve as diplomats should be sent to the same embassy or representative office has been an unresolved issue in the ministry, whose staff often have to cope with family problems caused by frequent separation.
"Of course we hope married couples can stay together. But placing a married couple in the same consulate is not an easy thing," said a female diplomat whose husband also serves in the ministry.
Committee chairperson Maysing Yang (楊黃美幸), who publicized the survey in a press conference yesterday, cited difficulties the ministry encounters as it considers whether to allow married couples to stay in the same consulate.
"In small consulates where only three or four people work, the husband or wife might happen to be the person in charge of assessing the staff's job performance," Yang said. "How can the husband or the wife assess their partner's job performance?"
Although personally opposed to the regulation, Yang nevertheless shared the concern that married couples may cover up each other's misdeeds if assigned to the same post.
"Placing a married couple in a big consulate is easier because the consulate has more vacancies and sections. The couple can be posted to different sections," Yang said, noting that the American Institute in Taiwan even gives US diplomats' partners jobs so that the couples can stay in the same country.
Unfortunately, most of the nation's consulates are small.
"The US is a big country and its consulates are large, having many positions," said the diplomat, who requested anonymity. "Taiwan is different from the US."
"Some advanced countries assign married couples who are diplomats to the same country on humanitarian grounds," Minister of Foreign Affairs Mark Chen (陳唐山) once said, aware that many of the country's diplomats are struggling to deal with marital difficulties and their children's education problems.
Although most diplomats want the current ban on married couples working in the same consulate removed, the survey found that 32.1 percent of ministry staff hope to keep the rule.
"Some diplomats whose partners work in other professions argue that their partners often have to quit their jobs in order to accompany them overseas. They said it is unfair that their partners lose their jobs, while married couples who are both diplomats can retain their careers when working abroad," Yang said.
Meanwhile, the survey also revealed that 63.1 percent of the ministry's 1,500 staff work more than 50 hours a week and that 49.2 percent of the staff said their workload is too heavy.
Despite prevalent overwork among ministry staff, the survey showed that 67.9 percent of the staff feel their jobs are meaningful and fulfilling and 88.6 percent of them are proud that they can contribute to the Republic of China's diplomacy.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater