Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) should not “equivocate” (睜眼說瞎話) about Chinese investment in advertising on the capital’s MRT system, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday.
The management of the corporation — which is 73.75 percent owned by the Taipei City Government — came under fire during cross-examination at the Taipei City Council.
Taipei City Councilor Wang Wei-chung (王威中) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) criticized the corporation for awarding the Taiwan Asia Ray Advertising Company (台灣雅仕維廣告公司) a contract to advertise at Zhongxiao Fuxing (忠孝復興) MRT Station.
He said the firm’s Hong Kong-based parent company, Asiaray Media Group Limited (雅仕維傳媒集團), was clearly affiliated with Beijing, citing public corporate documents listing all board members as Chinese citizens, as well as media reports stating that board chairman Lin Dexing (林德興) served on the People’s Political Consultative Conference of Yunnan Province.
Despite being shown evidence of the corporation’s connections, TRTC failed to even offer an explanation, he said.
TRTC CEO Sun Yi-chun (孫以濬) said that his firm’s contract with Asiaray had been approved by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, which is responsible for monitoring foreign investment.
His remarks drew a sharp response from Ko, who said that Sun should not “equivocate” about the firm’s affiliation. Ko said Sun was responsible for using his own judgement on the affiliation of the firm and should not “pass the buck” to the ministry.
No decision was made about the future of the corporation’s contract with Asiaray.
In related news, funds from the TRTC’s annual NT$11 million (US$352,994) public relations budget came under criticism from DPP Taipei City Councilor Kao Chia-yu (高嘉瑜).
While the firm’s accounts list half of the budget as having been spent on “employee compensation,” there was evidence that at least some of the funds had been redirected toward inappropriate gifts, she said, citing a report by another city councilor who had received NT$6,000 in gift certificates from firm officials at a year-end party.
Ko said the firm should provide detailed accounts for its expenditure, adding that the money should not be spent if employees did not “dare” to give a clear account.
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