The legislature’s Transportation Committee froze one-fifth of the Taiwan Railway Administration’s (TRA) budget yesterday after accusing the agency of mismanagement and accumulating huge losses.
The committee also said the agency’s budget could only be unfrozen after it submits a special report on how it plans to improve its management and reduce operational losses.
Democratic Progressive Party legislators Wang Sing-nan (王幸男) and Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) said the TRA has problems keeping the English translation of station names consistent and correct.
Yeh cited the TRA’s Sintsoying Station (新左營站) as an example. The name displayed outside the station was “Xin Zuo Ying,” but inside the name was “New Zuo Ying,” she said.
The TRA’s new station at Chang Jung Christian University was spelled “Chang Juag,” she said.
Yeh and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Luo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) also raised the issue of the company’s ever-growing operational losses.
“When I was serving at the Taiwan Provincial Assembly, the TRA had a daily loss of NT$3 million [US$93,000],” Yeh said. “The loss jumped to NT$10 million per day when I was a first-term legislator. Now TRA suffers daily losses of NT$30 million.”
Many of the TRA’s dormitories were now occupied by people who are not even employees, Luo said.
The TRA has suffered a drastic decline in passengers, which explained the severe annual losses, Luo said.
“Basically, you are able to continue the operation because you just write off the debts,” she said.
Despite its massive debts, the TRA budgeted NT$2.4 billion for staff bonuses, she said.
TRA Director-General Frank Fan (范植谷) said that the reward system was drawn up based on the principle governing the distribution of bonuses for civil servants.
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
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