For the first time in the nation’s national examination history, a test taker is suing the government on the grounds that years of her life were wasted and she suffered psychological stress due to a scoring mistake by the Examination Yuan.
The plaintiff, former singer Yeh Kou (葉蔻), is claiming NT$9 million (US$311,000) in compensation.
In 2006, Yeh took the mid-level Chinese medicine special examination, but failed by 0.82 points.
She filed for a re-marking of her paper six times over the years, because she had been given low scores in two of the subjects and she was sure she had given the correct answers.
Yeh last year launched an administrative complaint with the Taipei High Administrative Court and the court ruled that the Examination Yuan’s Ministry of Examinations had to finish a re-marking of Yeh’s examination papers within two months.
The results of the re-marking confirmed Yeh’s suspicion that there had been errors in the grading of her papers. The ministry confirmed that Yeh had passed the examination and qualified as a mid-level Chinese medicine practitioner, as long as she completed — as is customary for everybody who passes the test — 108 credits worth of courses over a year and a half.
Yeh had to pass the course before she could be considered a licensed mid-level Chinese medicine practitioner, the ministry said.
The ministry said that it received Yeh’s suit for compensation last month, adding that it respects citizens’ right to sue.
Minister of Examinations Tung Pao-cheng (董保城) said people who bring lawsuits against the ministry are usually individuals who did not meet an examination’s requirements or did not pass an examination, adding that Yeh was the first person to sue the ministry after passing an exam.
Yeh’s lawyer, Su Chia-hung (蘇家宏), said his client wants compensation for seven years of her life which were wasted and for having to have the test re-marked, as well as for suffering psychological stress.
Yeh also intends her lawsuit to be a reminder to the government that it should take a good look at the quality of the people marking and grading national examinations, Su said.
He added that the government should respect examinees’ right to take examinations on a fair and just basis.
According to the National Compensation Act (國賠法), civil servants who have mistakenly or purposefully infringed on the rights of the public in the line of duty must shoulder the responsibility for paying damages.
If people’s rights have been infringed upon through negligence of duty, the civil servant in question should also shoulder the responsibility of paying compensation.
Tung said the matter may become a case study for future lawsuits demanding compensation related to government examinations, adding that the unusual legal intervention serves as a warning to the ministry that it needs to adopt a stricter standard when selecting examination graders.
The ministry has convened a panel of lawyers to discuss the possibility that Yeh’s lawsuit may be successful, Tung said.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching