The National Science Council (NSC) yesterday said it had loosened regulations guiding the usage of council-funded research project budgets, to solve the current inflexibility that exists for usage, verification and write-off mechanisms.
NSC Minister Cyrus Chu (朱敬一) said hundreds of professors are suspected of using fake receipts to claim public funds (including research project subsidies from the council) and to purchase goods unrelated to their research spending — a situation investigated by prosecutors in March — which show that the rigid mechanisms of writing off research funding has led to some professors using “flexible” ways to solve the problem.
“Most of the professors are indirect victims of the mechanism’s insufficient flexibility as well as bad legal judgement,” he said
After consultations with Academia Sinica, the Ministry of Education, the National Audit Office and the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, the council announced the loosening of regulations focusing on three issues — “flexible flows,” “flexible expenses” and “strengthened internal controls.”
Flexible flows — the inflow and outflow of three items covering operating expenses, research equipment expenses and foreign travel expenses — have been loosened to 50 percent from 20 percent for inflow and 30 percent for outflow.
In addition, expenses exceeding the upper limit should be authorized by the council in advance and the alteration or adjustment of detailed items are to be decided by the executing facility.
In relation to flexible expenses, 2 percent of total future research funding (not exceeding more than NT$25,000 per year) can be used more flexibly and can also be written off with receipts, Chu said, adding that with the approval of the project coordinator, the total or partial quota can be released to the facility or school for flexible management.
Using a series of biological experiments as an example — something that may take many hours to undertake and which may mean the researchers have no access to public transport, then his or her taxi fare can be written off within the new flexible write-off mechanism, he said.
Moreover, Chu said the current mechanism only divides expenses into two types — approved or unapproved — which puts those in charge of verifying and approving expenses under heavy pressure and so a new option — “deducted from the facility’s management funding” — has been added to the mechanism.
Chu said the new option will give an incentive for the research facilities to improve internal controls of their funding usage, or else they will face reduced management funding by up to three times the amount of their excessive expenses.
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
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
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,