An appeal by Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英) against the Ministry of Civil Service’s decision to deny him a monthly pension of NT$60,000 as a former Taiwan Provincial Government employee was denied by the Civil Service Protection and Training Commission on Aug. 2.
The commission made the ruling available online yesterday.
Kuo, who had previously worked for the now-defunct Government Information Office, was dismissed as director of the information division at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Toronto in 2009 after making derogatory remarks about ethnic Taiwanese in several articles that he published under a pseudonym, Fan Lan-chin (范蘭欽).
These included comments referring to himself as a “high-class Mainlander” and ethnic Taiwanese as taibazi (台巴子, “Taiwanese rednecks”). He also wrote that China should suppress Taiwanese instead of granting them political freedom after it takes Taiwan by force.
In March 2014, Kuo was hired by the provincial government just a few months before reaching retirement age. The move was widely criticized, with many calling it a scheme for Kuo to be entitled to a monthly pension.
The commission said the procedures the provincial government used to employ Kuo were flawed, as documents for his employment were filed late, an error that could not be corrected.
The ministry revoked its original decision on the case to ensure equality of employment, which the commission said was in accordance with the law.
As Kuo’s employment has been revoked, he is no longer to be considered a civil servant when he applied for retirement in 2014, which supports the ministry’s decision to deny Kuo’s application, the commission said.
The provincial government was careless in hiring Kuo, contravening standard procedure, and affecting its human resource management, commission Director-General Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) said.
The incident also caused the public to doubt the validity and justness of the government’s civil servant hiring system, as it seemed that the government created an ad hoc position for the needs of one individual, Lee said.
Legislators of all affiliations had panned Kuo’s case, saying the incident left a bad taste in the mouth of the public.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said that the procedural flaws were evidence of an under-the-table deal.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) said that Kuo filing for retirement four months after returning to work and expecting to receive a NT$60,000 pension violated principle of social justice.
KMT Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) said that if the employment procedure was flawed, the civil servants who handled the employment documents should also be investigated.
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
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,
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