The Control Yuan summoned Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday to question him about two recent scandals in the city -- inadequate medical care for a battered little girl surnamed Chiu and an escalator malfunction at a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station which badly injured a commuter.
During the three-hour long session, Control Yuan members questioned whether Ma was personally accountable for the oversights.
PHOTO:WANG MING-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
Ma said that in the Chiu case, the mistake in transferring her to various hospitals was the lack of effort put in by the doctors on the front line.
"It was not the operations of the national Emergency Operations Center [EOC] that failed, but the frontline doctors, who also created false records later on," he said.
Lin Chin-nan (林致男) and Liu Chi-hwa (劉奇樺), two doctors at Taipei Municipal Jen Ai Hospital, are accused of having never reviewed the girl's case and of forging a false report on the case.
Ma said that last year the EOC managed to find hospital beds for 84 percent of the patients who needed one, so therefore he still had confidence its performance despite the incident.
He stressed that the fault lay not with the EOC, but the doctors at Taipei Municipal Jen Ai Hospital.
Ma admitted, however, that in both incidents, there was miscommunication between the city government and city hospitals and the MRT station.
Ma also told the Control Yuan members that while they inspected the medical system, investigators should not overlook the fact that domestic violence was at the root of the problem in the Chiu case.
Control Yuan member Chao Jung-yao (
Chao said that it was unfortunate that these mishaps had led to a drop in Ma's public approval rating.
Hsieh Ching-huei (
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