Minister of Transportation and Communications Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) remained tight-lipped about the possible personnel reshuffle within the ministry, saying that the proposed personnel changes are “still a work in progress.”
Hochen made the comments after the Chinese-language China Times on Tuesday reported that Tourism Bureau Director-General David Hsieh (謝謂君) and Directorate-General of Highways (DGH) Director-General Chao Hsing-hua (趙興華) had tendered their resignations after a fire killed 26 people onboard a tour bus last month.
As well as replacing Hsieh and Chao, 14 other top-tier officials are to be reassigned as well, the report said.
Some of the significant changes include the heads of the Civil Aeronautics Administration, Taoyuan International Airport Services, the Taiwan Railways Administration and the National Freeway Bureau.
Asked to comment on the reshuffle, Hochen said that he values the strengths of those officials.
He said that personnel changes in the agencies under the ministry would be made after considering various factors.
“I am not in a position at this moment to confirm or explain appointments of the ministry’s officials, as it is a still a work in progress,” he said.
Although Hochen refused to disclose further details, he defended the necessity of personnel changes on a show on the Taipei-based Pop Radio yesterday morning.
“Several agencies have shown signs of ‘administrative lassitude,’ either becoming less aggressive in making progress or less efficient in executing the policies. We hope the personnel change will bring in new leadership and reform,” he said.
Hochen also denied that Control Yuan member Lin Ya-feng (林雅鋒) had intervened in a personnel change at China Airlines (CAL) through Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Wu Meng-feng (吳盟分).
Lin’s husband, Yu Chih (俞智), a former senior manager at the airline, was reported to have been demoted to a second-tier position.
“I was informed by the deputy minister about the personnel change at CAL, but there was no intervention from the Control Yuan,” he 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:
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