The government should take the controversy surrounding Taitung County Commissioner Kuang Li-chen’s (鄺麗貞) latest trip abroad seriously, analysts said, and rethink budgets and regulations for official overseas “inspection tours.”
Kuang has come under fire for not canceling her 13-day trip to Europe late last month as Typhoon Fung-wong approached Taiwan. She apologized to residents of Taitung upon her return on Monday. On Tuesday, prosecutors questioned Kuang for more than four hours about the use of public funds on the trip.
Kuang has made eight inspection trips abroad during her two years and three months in office at a total cost of more than NT$10 million (US$300,000).
The Investigation Bureau and the Control Yuan are looking into the nature of these trips after critics suggested that her frequent forays were inappropriate and may have involved misuse of taxpayers’ money.
After the controversy erupted, it quickly spread to several Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) local government heads, including Hsinchu Mayor Lin Cheng-tze (林政則), Kinmen County Commissioner Lee Chu-feng (李炷烽) and Nantou County Commissioner Lee Chao-ching (李朝卿), all of whom have made more than 10 overseas inspection tours over the last two years.
Shih Cheng-feng (施正鋒), dean of National Dong Hwa University’s College of Indigenous Studies, said frequent trips abroad by Kuang and other government heads were a “deep-rooted convention” among the nation’s officials. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) should seek to tighten regulations and review the budget mechanism for inspection tours and the frequency of such visits, Shih said.
“The foreign inspection tours may be legal, but they are unreasonable. The KMT and the government should not ignore the public’s response to this issue,” Shih said.
Local government heads, legislators and government officials receive a budget for overseas inspection tours every year. Staff and township heads and other contacts are often invited on the trips, allegedly as a reward for their service, including as vote brokers.
Shih said the foreign tour budget, like the special allowance funds given to government officials, lay in a gray area between public and private use.
Ma’s administration must examine where the money is going if it is serious about solving the problem, Shih said.
Political analyst Wang Kung-yi (王崑義), a professor at National Taiwan Ocean University, said the government should review the regulations for official visits abroad. As the ruling party, the KMT should set an example by restraining its party members from inappropriate spending, Wang said.
Wang urged prosecutors to set a precedent for other cases by probing whether Kuang had pocketed part of the budget.
The case of former Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City councilor Hsu Fu-nan (許富男), who was sentenced to six years in prison last week by Taipei judges for spending NT$1.5 million in public funds on a 2005 trip to Russia, can also serve as a reference, Wang said.
In addition to Kuang, Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) also came under fire last month for leaving the country as the same typhoon approached.
Hu defended his decision when he returned from his trip to the Marshall Islands on Sunday, saying that he was carrying out diplomatic work.
In response to the controversy surrounding Kuang, KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) asked the party’s Taitung branch to look into the matter and send its findings to the Evaluation and Discipline Committee for further investigation.
Wang Yeh-lih (王業立), a political science professor at Tunghai University, said the KMT’s response to the controversy was inept and urged the government to strengthen its supervision of public spending on officials’ trips abroad.
Wang Kung-yi said, however, that foreign inspection trips were necessary and the government should be careful not to overreact.
Meanwhile, amid the controversy, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) was scheduled to leave for New York and Boston on Aug. 23.
The 10-day visit would be his fourth official trip abroad since taking office in December 2006.
Hau will meet New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, learn about public safety measures and tour urban renewal projects during the trip.
Hau declined to comment on the criticism of Kuang, but called on the public not to exaggerate the issue. Local government heads must not give up the trips to learn about development abroad, he said.
However, Hau said that if a natural disaster such as a tropical storm were to hit Taipei during his absence, he would return immediately.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,