Medical professionals at public-run hospitals are perceived as the least corrupt among 24 public employee categories in the country, a recent poll commissioned by the Ministry of Justice showed.
Medical professionals at public-run hospitals as a whole were given a score of 5.94 on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 seen as the least corrupt, making them the cleanest civil servant group in Taiwan last year, the ministry said in a report based on its survey on public servant integrity.
Land administration office workers were seen as the second-least corrupt, with a score of 5.75, followed by general public functionaries, with a score of 5.72, said the poll, which the ministry commissioned local polling company Taiwan Real Survey Co to conduct.
Judicial officials, including prosecutors and judges, received scores of 5.27 and 5.15 respectively, making them the ninth and 10th cleanest groups.
The survey found that officials responsible for the gravel industry were seen as the most corrupt public employees, with a score of 3.75, followed by legislators, who received a score of 4.07.
Judicial Yuan officials said the results may reflect respondents’ biases.
Medical professionals at public hospitals enjoyed the top spot for integrity because doctors meet patients face-to-face and offer them medical advice, Judicial Yuan officials said.
Prosecutors and judges, meanwhile, may have received relatively lower scores because the media often reports controversial court cases, Judicial Yuan officials said.
Judicial Yuan President Lai In-jaw (賴英照) said the manner in which the questions were presented and how the respondents were selected could also have been factors that influenced the results.
“In any case, the Judicial Yuan will study the poll results and take them as a warning that the integrity of judicial officials needs to be improved,” Lai said.
The Taiwan Real Survey Co conducted the telephone survey on randomly selected adults around the country between June 25 and June 30.
The results were only released recently because they were compiled after a series of seminars were held to discuss the raw data.
A total of 2,009 valid samples were collected, with a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of plus or minus 2.19 percentage points.
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
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,
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