Premier-designate Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) said on Sunday that he will evaluate the feasibility of raising the salaries of government employees, military personnel and public school teachers after he assumes office on May 20.
“However, no timetable is available at the moment for taking such an initiative,” Liu said in an interview with a cable television station that aired on Sunday night, adding that an overall review is needed before a decision can be reached on the much-anticipated raise.
On president-elect Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) recent remarks that he hopes the incoming Cabinet will conduct grassroots and community outreach programs to better understand popular views on matters of public concern, Liu said he would not force Cabinet members to engage in “long-stay” programs as a way to get close to the public.
In the run-up to the March 22 presidential election, Ma launched a “long-stay” program during which he stayed one or two nights at the homes of selected people in central and southern townships as part of his get-out-the-vote campaign, which allowed him to build a good rapport with many townsfolk in his rival’s traditional vote banks.
“I don’t think that Ma really wants his Cabinet ministers to emulate him and stay overnight at peoples’ homes. I think he just wants to encourage Cabinet members not to stay in air-conditioned rooms all the time and to try hard to tune in to popular demands and mainstream opinions,” Liu said.
Liu further said he expects incoming Cabinet members to not spend excessive amounts of time in social engagement and instead devote more energy to policy planning and administrative innovation.
“I believe that low levels of social engagement will limit unnecessary trouble, inspire the public to lead a simple, frugal lifestyle and contribute to the establishment of clean politics,” Liu said.
Reaffirming his respect for the country’s civil service system, Liu said Democratic Progressive Party members in the civil service need not worry about possible victimization by the incoming government.
“What concerns me most is the recruitment and promotion of outstanding civil servants to suitable posts to achieve our goal of good governance,” he said.
Asked about his views on the Papua New Guinea diplomatic scandal in which approximately US$30 million in diplomatic funds vanished into private hands, Liu said diplomatic work should be carried out with prudence and according to the law to avoid unnecessary financial losses and damage to the country’s international image.
Liu said the unfortunate event could have been avoided if the government had followed existing administrative regulations.
“Given Taiwan’s diplomatic plight, checkbook diplomacy cannot be totally abandoned. But the government should pay special heed to the legality of the methods adopted in relevant operations,” Lu said, adding that the country should also refrain from paying unreasonably high sums to forge formal ties with a single ally.
“We need to weigh all the pros and cons and all possible advantages and disadvantages before paying any bills in order to avoid wasting national resources and to avoid a recurrence of similar scandals in the future,” Liu said.
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
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
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