Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday said the government would continue to deal with the issue of so-called “fat cats” in government-funded agencies, but added that high pay is a key factor when luring high-quality talent into specialized organizations.
“Good pay must be offered to entice top-class professionals to organizations such as the National Health Research Institute [NHRI] and the Industrial Technology Research Institute [ITRI],” Wu said during a plenary interpellation session at the Legislative Yuan.
Citing an investigation report by the Control Yuan, the government’s top watchdog body, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Liu Shen-liang (劉盛良) demanded that the Executive Yuan form a special task force to address the issue of the high salaries paid to the chiefs of government-funded non-profit organizations, some of whom are paid salaries reaching into the millions of NT dollars.
According to the Control Yuan, the annual salaries for the presidents of the NHRI and the ITRI are NT$8.41 million (US$267,000) and NT$7.8 million. These positions have been criticized by some Control Yuan members as belonging to “the fattest of the fat cats.”
The Control Yuan recently censured the Executive Yuan over the issue. Wu said the Executive Yuan has been addressing the controversial practice over the past year.
“After a one-year, in-depth investigation, the government has slashed the salaries for the CEOs of some government-funded agencies, although some others are not classed as ‘fat cats,’” he said. “The government will continue to examine the issue across the board.”
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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:
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