Women's rights groups yesterday urged the government to come up with a better system for reporting and handling sexual harassment suits to include workers that may not be covered by current laws.
The call came in the wake of the government's poor handling of a case involving a teaching assistant's complaint of sexual harassment against a professor.
Huang Tsang-ling (
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
According to Huang, a teaching assistant at the National Taipei University of Technology suffered four-to-five years of telephone and e-mail harassment from a professor and finally reported the case to the school's gender-equality committee.
The professor claimed to be suffering from depression, so the school decided to let him take half a year off from work to undergo therapy.
The teaching assistant then appealed to the Ministry of Education, only to have her case referred back to the school.
Huang said that when the foundation was helping with the case, they discovered that a teaching assistant is not considered a teacher, so she or he is not protected or covered by many of the ministry's regulations.
Teaching assistant positions in the country are usually filled by graduates of any four-year course. Many of these assistants are allowed to teach classes.
Huang Bei-lei (
Lee Chi-kuo (
Teaching assistants, Lee said, should be listed as education personnel and supervised by the education ministry.
Su Chien-ling (
Su said that all government agencies need to shoulder the responsibility to come up with bet-ter harassment-reporting mechanisms for teaching assistants and others who might otherwise "slip through" the system.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai
Four China Coast Guard ships briefly sailed through prohibited waters near Kinmen County, Taipei said, urging Beijing to stop actions that endanger navigation safety. The Chinese ships entered waters south of Kinmen, 5km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, at about 3:30pm on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement later the same day. The ships “sailed out of our prohibited and restricted waters” about an hour later, the agency said, urging Beijing to immediately stop “behavior that endangers navigation safety.” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) yesterday told reporters that Taiwan would boost support to the Coast Guard