Legislators across party lines yesterday questioned the Ministry of Education over what they said was a poor use of the budget for education, contrasting a campus security budget of about NT$65 million (US$2.08 million) with a multibillion-dollar fund for swimming lessons, and urged the ministry to fund the establishment of a campus safety program.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said the ministry allocated NT$64.96 million for school security, to be shared between more than 3,000 schools nationwide this fiscal year, with each school receiving only about NT$19,000.
The criticism of the ministry’s budget policy comes in the wake of the murder of an eight-year-old girl at the Wenhua Elementary School in Taipei, allegedly by a man who slipped into the campus unseen.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
The elementary school has only two security guards on campus and an insufficient number of surveillance cameras, Chen said, adding that schools nationwide are understaffed and ill-equipped because of poor government funding.
She said that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration launched a 12-year program to promote swimming and water safety in 2010 and earmarked a budget of NT$3.9 billion for the first four years, with annual budgets thereafter to be designated on a yearly basis depending on the needs of local governments.
She called on the ministry to establish a campus security program with funding equivalent to the swimming program.
Some local governments have not allocated a budget for campus security personnel, so it is the central government’s responsibility to maintain campus safety, she said.
Minister of Education Wu Se-hwa (吳思華) said that the ministry and local governments have allocated a portion of the budget for campus security every year, and the ministry is looking into the security plans of each local government to calculate the ministry’s budget in the next fiscal year.
The ministry is trying to draw on a reserve fund allocated for this year, Wu said, adding that upgrading campus security facilities should be prioritized over additional security staffing, which involves modifying the existing system for public schools.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiang Nai-shin (蔣乃辛) said the government was paying lip service to campus security if it could not redress the shortage of security personnel and the insufficient budget.
He called on the ministry to employ substitute military servicemen to bolster campus security.
In related news, a joint report by the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Health and Welfare was submitted yesterday to the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee, outlining government plans to increase campus security by raising safety awareness among faculty members, fully implementing visitor identification on campus (including taking visitor’s identification cards before entrance, ensuring visitors wear clearly visible badges and notifying teachers of every visit), promoting self-defense skills among students and discouraging students from being alone on campus.
The Ministry of the Interior said that it had ordered police to appoint special personnel to guide every school and establish an emergency call system.
The Ministry of Justice said it had requested prosecutors’ offices to take measures to prevent violence against children.
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