The Taipei City Government issued more traffic tickets last year not only to make up for a revenue shortfall amid an economic recession, but also to fatten its employees' wallets, several Taipei City councilors alleged yesterday.
The number of traffic tickets issued by the city's Parking Management and Development Office and the Taipei City Police Department last year increased to 3.9 million from 2.3 million in 2007, with total fines reaching NT$3.6 billion (US$103 million).
Traffic police officers and employees at the Parking Management and Development Office, from the director down to the janitors, received monthly bonuses because of the record number of fines, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊端雄) said.
"The economic situation is making life more difficult for most people. However, not all of the fines go to the national treasury. Part of the money goes into those civil servants' pockets," he said at the Taipei City Council.
Basic-level staff received a bonus of between NT$1,000 and NT$5,000 each month for handling traffic ticket matters, while higher-level officials received as much as NT$9,800 in bonus from the fines, city government statistics showed.
Of the NT$426 million in parking ticket fines the office received last year, more than NT$10 million went to office staff. About NT$3.2 million of the NT$137 million in fines the police department collected went to police officers, the statistics showed.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Huang Hsiang-chun (黃向群) condemned the city government for failing to set up fair regulations on the distribution of monthly bonuses and urged the city government to amend the regulations.
"It might be reasonable for those who issue the tickets to get the bonus, but why should we give bonuses to the office director, his driver and even the janitors who are not responsible for handing out the tickets," Huang said.
A police officer at the Nangang branch of the police department, surnamed Kao, issued more than 24,000 traffic tickets last year, Chuang said, calling on the city government to focus more efforts on fighting crime rather than fining the city's residents.
In response, Chang Cheng-liang (詹政良), chief secretary of the Parking Management and Development Office, acknowledged that all staff in the office received monthly bonuses from the fines, but argued that the bonuses were distributed in accordance with the regulations.
Chen Shao-hsu (陳少旭), director of the police department's enforcement team, said the regulations stated that the monthly bonus given to each policeman should be no more than 10 percent of their monthly salary, dismissing accusations that police officers were deliberately looking to increase their bonuses by issuing more tickets.
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
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
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