Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) chairman Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) has been accused of lying to the Taipei City Council about the selection process for EasyCard Corp board members.
Hochen was called before the city council’s Transportation Committee yesterday to explain the appointments of Kenneth Lin (林向愷) and Tai Chi-chuan (戴季全) as chairman of EasyCard Investment and Holdings Co and EasyCard Corp respectively.
The appointments drew criticism and allegations of political sinecure because the two posts had been previously been held by one person.
Hochen’s presentation was criticized by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) city councilors, who said he made deliberate misstatements while refusing to provide an explanation of the dual appointment.
Hochen’s statement that the selection committee had never formally nominated Hsieh Chia-hung (謝嘉鴻) to serve as city representative was blasted by Taipei City Councilor William Hsu (徐弘庭), who said that the nomination had been made, but rejected by the EasyCard Investment and Holdings Co’s board, due to conflict of interest concerns.
News that the selection committee had considered Hsieh was controversial because of his position as “special assistant” to the chairman of the Taiwan Smart Card Corp, an EasyCard Corp competitor.
After Lin acknowledged that the EasyCard Investment and Holdings Co board had blocked Hsieh’s nomination, Hochen apologized for his misstatement.
Hochen’s statement that the decision to appoint two separate board chairmen had been made by the EasyCard Investment and Holdings Co’s board was also criticized.
“While in the past the chairman of the EasyCard Corporation has always been decided internally by the city government, Hochen maintains that this time the choice was not finalized until the company’s board met,” KMT Taipei City Councilor Chen Ping-fu (陳炳甫) said. “That’s just false — the board election is a formality.”
Chen said that Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) told him that the dual selections for board chairmen were given to him for approval by the selection committee, which failed to notify the mayor that the two positions had previously been held by the same person.
He said it was Hochen’s responsibility to provide a clear explanation as to when and why the selection committee had chosen to nominate two separate chairmen.
He also criticized Hochen for later stating that the documents recommending two candidates had been approved by the Taipei Department of Transportation.
Chen said Hochen was trying to shift responsibility for approving the decision.
Taipei City Department of Rapid Transit Systems Director Chou Li-liang (周禮良), who sat on the selection committee, confirmed that Ko had been sent two different nominations for the two board chairmanships.
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