The leak of a government document about civil servants’ pay next year will be investigated, the Executive Yuan said yesterday.
The Directorate-General of Personnel Administration on Tuesday announced that the Cabinet had decided on July 21 not to give civil servants and military personnel a pay raise next year.
A copy of the document that the directorate submitted to Premier Lin Chuan (林全) about the decision was posted on Facebook on Thursday by National Civil Servant Association president Harry Lee (李來希).
Lee, who has led several protests against the government’s pension reform plans, on Saturday said that on Friday night he received a call from someone saying the Executive Yuan had started to investigate the leak and “and the caller urgently sought my help.”
“The document is not marked confidential, and its content is not what should be confidential. How can the Executive Yuan investigate its disclosure?” Lee said. “Is Taiwan returning to the Martial Law era?”
Executive Yuan spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said that even though the document was not marked confidential, it is an important document that should not have been divulged and Lee has no role in the process of handling government paperwork.
Executive Yuan’s regulations on official documents state that civil servants cannot publicize a document unless it is allowed to be made public, Hsu said.
“Confidentiality is not a necessary precondition for non-disclosure,” he said.
The document was sealed when it was delivered to the premier, so whoever revealed it to outsiders has violated civil service discipline and should be held accountable, Hsu said.
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
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