A controversial proposal to overhaul the manner in which the nation’s civil servants are evaluated cleared the Examination Yuan yesterday in the face of virulent opposition from public workers who have vowed to lobby the legislature not to support the Examination Yuan’s proposal.
The National Civil Servant Association, which represents civil servants nationwide, said earlier this week it would encourage lawmakers to introduce their own version of the legislation.
As a sop to widespread opposition, the Examination Yuan made significant concessions in its amendment to the Civil Servants Evaluation Act (公務人員考績法) yesterday.
The initial version had directed that a minimum of 3 percent of staff at each government agency would receive a “C” grade on a five-point sliding scale of A plus, A, B, C, and D. Anyone who received such a grade three times in 10 years would be dismissed or forced to take early retirement.
Under the amendment approved yesterday, heads of central government departments and local governments were given the authority to adjust the minimum requirement as necessary.
“Hard-working civil servants do not have to worry about getting a “C” grade because it would only happen under extraordinary circumstances,” Examination Yuan President John Kuan (關中) said.
Minister of Civil Service Chang Che-chen (張哲琛) said the head of a central government department or a local government head could now decide that none of his or her employees deserve a “C” grade or demand that a minimum of 6 percent receive a “C.”
In accordance with the proposed amendment, civil servants who are found guilty in criminal cases, of sexually harassment or who are absent from work without sufficient cause for a period of two days can now be punished by being awarded a “C” grade.
A “C” grade can be expunged from a civil servant’s record on receipt of an “A plus” or three “As” in consecutive years, the proposed amendment said.
To ensure that the new system does not become a tool used by supervisors to “eliminate dissidents” they don’t get along with, the Ministry of Civil Service reserves the rights to audit evaluation results and hold supervisors who are found to have abused their power responsible, it said.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: