Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday brushed off concerns over city appointments to the board of EasyCard Investment and Holdings Co.
The Taipei City Government owns a controlling interest in EasyCard Investment and Holdings, which in turn manages EasyCard Corp and related enterprises. EasyCard smartcards issued by the corporation are used to pay for public transport services and small purchases at numerous retailers in Taipei and other cities.
Ko’s appointment of Tai Chi-chuan (戴季全) — a Web entrepreneur and former consultant to Ko’s mayoral campaign — to the board attracted criticism, because Ko had earlier promised to eliminate sinecure “fat cat” positions within city-controlled corporations as rewards to political supporters.
“There is a standard procedure for appointments in the Taipei City Government,” Ko said, adding that several commissioners from related departments had created a long list of candidates that were then put to a vote by the mayor and his Cabinet.
“Even though I am mayor, I practice collective leadership,” Ko said. “When I saw that Kenneth Lin (林向愷) received enough votes to get appointed, I was dissatisfied, but still chose to follow procedure.”
Lin — a retired National Taiwan University economics professor who was also appointed to the corporation’s board — took out a full-page ad criticizing Ko during last year’s mayoral election.
Ko said that it was unreasonable to ban anyone who helped during his campaign from taking a position in the city government, adding that Tai would be held to rigorous performance standards as a board member and would be fired if he failed to measure up. Ko said that there was no guarantee Tai would be elected board chairman, adding that Tai still had to address potential conflicts of interest regarding companies under his control.
Ko said that it was important for Taipei’s mayor to return power to the people, adding that, while he had not voted for Tang Chih-min (湯志民) during the Department of Education commissioners appointment process, he was pleasantly surprised afterwards by Tang’s performance.
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,