The Control Yuan yesterday censured the Executive Yuan and the Government Information Office (GIO) for oversights in their management of state-owned media and urged both to improve their performance to achieve “good governance.”
Control Yuan members Chou Yang-shan (周陽山) and Ma Hsiu-ru (馬秀如), who investigated events that took place over the past few years, accused the GIO of disregarding problems with the Central News Agency (CNA) during the three years Chen Shen-ching (陳申青) was chairman of the agency, beginning in July 2008.
Describing Chen’s leadership style as “arbitrary,” the Control Yuan said CNA staffers worked “in a state of anxiety” and “suffered from low morale” under his leadership.
Although the agency only has 340 employees, the number of personnel reshuffles during Chen’s three-year term totaled 600, the Control Yuan members said.
Senior staffers were coerced into resigning during the recession and Chen also tried to force then-CNA president Joe Hung (洪健昭) to resign by making derogatory comments against him, but Hung refused to leave.
The Control Yuan said that then-Government Information Office minister Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) overlooked the internal disturbances at the agency and schemed with Chen to evict Hung.
The Control Yuan also accused CNA of not devoting more attention to international news.
“As an important state-owned news agency and a source that provides the public with international news, CNA is seriously understaffed in terms of its overseas correspondents, with only 20 reporters in 21 cities around the world,” it said.
Chiang denied the allegations, saying he had not inteferred with either the agency’s administration or personal arrangements.
State-owned Radio Taiwan International has also gone “in the wrong direction” as it continues to lay off its employees with expertise in foreign languages and Chinese dialects because of budget and personnel constraints, resulting in a loss of talent, the Control Yuan said.
The GIO was also found negligent in overseeing the Taiwan Broadcasting System, which is made up of the Public Television Service (PTS), Chinese Television System (CTS), Hakka TV, Taiwan Macroview TV and Taiwan Indigenous TV.
“It’s been eight months since the former PTS board members’ terms expired in December, but PTS hasn’t been able to bring legally elected new members to the board,” the Control Yuan members said.
The PTS has been embroiled in a management scandal since 2008, amid allegations of interference in the selection of its board members and operation by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government.
The two Control Yuan members also said the GIO failed to detect irregularities in the year-end performance bonuses given to then-CTS general manager Chen Jen-ran (陳正然) during his 2007 to 2009 term, when the company was in the red.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to