Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) yesterday accused Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Corp president Samuel Lin (林鵬良) of wasting taxpayers’ money by spending NT$6 million (US$203,000) on public relations expenses last year.
Lo made the accusation during a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, when officials from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications were scheduled to brief lawmakers on their budget plans for the next fiscal year.
“His [Lin’s] public relations expenses are even higher than the special allowance granted to Ministry of Transportation and Communications Minister Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國),” she said. “He [Lin] used the money to buy high-class red wine at Sogo Department Store and top-quality ties from Hermes as gifts. Was he buying them for guests, or was he buying them for himself?”
The nation’s largest airport was ranked 29th by the Airports Council International in terms of the overall service last year, down from 26th in 2010, she said.
Lo said the company did not make public the results of the council’s evaluation, which she claimed was the worst in five years.
Lo said Lin’s spending was “ridiculous” and she asked the company to provide a list of gifts given to guests last year.
In response, Lin said he did purchase the items as gifts, but they were not for him. He did not say how much the items cost.
Lin said that he only used about 61 percent of the public-relations allowance allocated to him, adding that about 10 percent was used to pay travel expenses for consultants from overseas.
Lin attributed the fall in the airport’s ranking to the number of airports participating in the evaluation increasing from 154 in 2010 to 186 last year.
Other factors, including the Airport Rail project still under construction, as well as renovations at Terminal One, also affected the performance of the airport, he said.
“Our goal is to improve and a fall in ranking is part of that process,” Lin said.
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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