Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) said yesterday that government officials would be limited to one bodyguard each except in extraordinary cases.
Liu made the remarks in response to a question by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Ching-hua (李慶華) on the legislative floor.
The unnecessary allotment of police to serve as bodyguards for government officials has increased the workload for a national police force that is already short-staffed, Lee said.
Following the recent controversy over the alleged abuse of bodyguards assigned to officials, two government officials said yesterday they had given up their bodyguards.
The Government Information Office (GIO) issued a press release saying that the bodyguards of Shih Su-mei (石素梅), head of the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, and Jiang Yi-hua (江宜樺), head of the Research, Development and Evaluation and Evaluation Commission, had been transferred back to the National Policy Agency.
Out of the 36 Cabinet-level agencies, 15 heads of the departments were assigned bodyguards, the GIO said.
“[The KMT government] has reduced the use of police as bodyguards. More than 40 bodyguards were assigned to officials in January when the [Democratic Progressive Party was in power.] That number has been reduced to 20 after May 20,” Liu said.
Jiang said he didn’t ask for a bodyguard but followed the practice started in 1999 as his predecessor Jay Shih (施能傑) told him that he may encounter some problems when inspecting state-owned firms.
Liu said the Cabinet would conduct a review of the matter to make sure only officials who have security concerns are assigned bodyguards.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
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