Civic groups and academics yesterday called for more transparency in the way public funds are invested, saying they suspected the government of secretly using the funds to stabilize the stock market and benefit certain companies.
Although the country established the Government Information Disclosure Act (政府資訊公開法) in 2005, it had not been properly implemented, the Peacetime Foundation of Taiwan said.
The foundation said that when it sent petitions to various government agencies seeking disclosures on the stock portfolios of the four major government-run funds — the Civil Service Pension Fund, the Postal Savings Fund, the Labor Insurance Fund and the Labor Pension Fund — the petitions were either rejected or ignored.
Chien Hsi-chieh, director of the Peacetime Foundation of Taiwan, said the public had a right to know what financial assets these institutions held, and that the foundation would file for administrative litigation.
“Whether it be investment of funds or government officials’ special funds, as long as classified information is not involved, the details should be made public to stop corruption,” he said.
Kang Jung-pao (康榮寶), associate professor of accounting at National Chengchi University, used mutual funds as an example.
“Whether or not you pay attention to what the mutual fund managers invest in, the investment bank publicizes the stock holdings of the fund every three months,” he said. “However, the government refuses to publicize the stock portfolio of the labor insurance and pension funds. Are workers not entitled to the same rights as those who invest in mutual funds?”
Kang said that by looking at the large deficits the funds have suffered since last September — NT$80 billion (US$2.4 billion) in total — it was apparent that the managers of these funds had not operated in the best interests of the more than 8 million workers in the country.
In response, Huang Chao-hsi (黃肇熙), chairperson of the Labor Pension Fund Supervisory Committee, said the Council of Labor Affairs regularly publicize the financial conditions of its funds as required by law.
However, “it would not be appropriate to detail stock holdings to the public, because it may benefit those who attempt to manipulate the stock market,” he said.
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,