The legislature yesterday revised regulations to demand that public servants deprived of their positions because they hold dual nationality return the amount they earned during their term of office in the public sector.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chiu Chih-wei (邱志偉), who sponsored the amendment to the Civil Service Employment Act (公務人員任用法), said that the revision was aimed at “cultivating loyalty among public servants.”
Public servants are barred from holding dual citizenship under the Nationality Act (國籍法) and face dismissal for violating the regulation, but there was no stipulation demanding that they pay financial compensation.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Meanwhile, lawmakers removed a clause from the act that disqualified people with physical disabilities from being hired as public servants despite them being qualified as prescribed by a related act.
The legislature also approved an amendment to the Criminal Procedural Act (刑事訴訟法) to provide legal protection for economically disadvantaged people and Aborigines, by requiring the mandatory presence of lawyers both when people from these groups are questioned by prosecutors and when they appear in court for trial.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Jeng Tian-tsair (鄭天財) hailed the revision as a big step forward in protecting Aboriginal people’s judicial rights.
The legislature enacted the Act on Cross-Border Transfer of Prisoners (跨國移交受刑人法) to set out the legal basis for transferring prisoners between nations, including regulations pertaining to calculations on time remaining to be served and procedures for the transfer of prisoners, to ensure that the process is carried out smoothly.
According to government statistics, about 1,500 Taiwanese are serving sentences abroad, with 1,000 in China and more than 500 in Southeastern Asian countries, while Taiwan holds 492 foreign prisoners.
Under the act, the transfer of prisoners requires consent from both the prisoner’s home country and host country, while the prisoner must agree to the transfer through his or her own free will.
The legislature also required a report from the Judicial Yuan, the Ministry of Justice, the Mainland Affairs Council, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of the Interior on the situation of Taiwanese incarcerated in other countries.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
The National Immigration Agency has banned two Chinese from returning to Taiwan, after they published social media content it described as disrespectful to national sovereignty. The agency imposed a two-month ban on a Chinese man surnamed Liang (梁) and a permanent ban on a woman surnamed Yang (楊), an influencer with 23 million followers, in October last year and last week respectively. Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) yesterday said on the sidelines of a legislative meeting that Chinese visitors to Taiwan are required to comply with the rules and regulations governing their entry permits. The government has handled the ban and
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