The Taipei City Government has refused to foot the bill for a budget overrun on the Taipei Lantern Festival in February — which reportedly totaled NT$20 million (US$662,625) — Taipei Department of Tourism and Information Commissioner Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏) said yesterday.
Quoting festival contractor Ideaplus Corp, the Chinese-language Mirror magazine yesterday reported that the overspending was partly due to payments to performers involved in a Feb. 11 parade, who were reportedly hired last-minute.
The increased spending on a 3D light sculpture performance at Taipei’s North Gate (北門) on Zhongxiao W Road also contributed to the cost overrun, the company said.
The magazine in a separate report said the company asked the Taipei City Government to cover the excess cost, which Ko reportedly sought to resolve by borrowing NT$20 million from his wife, Peggy Chen (陳珮琪), who was reportedly irritated by Ko’s request and threatened to divorce him.
Ko was upset with Chien, telling his wife that he wanted to “strangle” the commissioner over the excess spending, the report said.
“The mayor used to be a doctor who saved lives, and Taipei City Hall is not run on ‘blood and iron,’’” Chien said in response to media queries yesterday. “I do not think he would strangle people.”
The budget for the festival has been NT$54 million since former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin’s (郝龍斌) term and will remain so, and any spending beyond the quota must be shouldered by Ideaplus, Chien said.
The firm should have solicited more sponsors to offset the deficit, she said.
Asked if she was concerned about the possibility of being fired by Ko over the incident, Chien said she had not heard anything from the mayor.
Ko was pleased with this year’s festival, which was favorably reviewed, she said.
“Media reports to the public are like droplets to a river, but the people’s support is like a flow that pushes the river forward, which is what we care about,” Chien said, adding that her department would continue holding events that have won the public’s praise.
Statistics provided by Ideaplus show that the festival cost NT$121.9 million to stage and that, after counting the funds it raised from sponsors, it suffered a deficit of NT$20 million.
However, the firm would not clarify in which categories the deficits arose, the department 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:
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
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
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