Reforms are needed to reduce prosecutors’ workloads and improve efficiency, New Power Party (NPP) Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said on Friday.
“You cannot expect horses to run without giving them grass to eat,” he said at a legislative hearing on the issue, criticizing what he called the endemic problem of overwork in prosecutors’ offices, particularly for judicial officers.
“They are just as busy at night as during the day, but they still are not eligible for overtime pay, even though the workload is foreseeable,” he said.
Numerous prosecutors testified that their caseloads have progressively increased, even as staff numbers have decreased as open positions remain unfilled.
“With an average of 80 cases a month, you are going to be in court at least 120 times each month, assuming that half of the cases cannot be handled in one hearing,” Taoyuan District Prosecutor Wang Wen-tzu (王文咨) said, citing the prevalence of family violence and human trafficking cases where plaintiffs and defendants must be called in to testify separately.
“Assuming that we do not take any breaks and are not required to travel or attend meetings, we could still only spend an average of 1.8 to 2.25 hours per case if we were to abide by overtime restrictions,” Kaohsiung’s Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office prosecutor Cheng Tzu-wei (鄭子薇) said, adding that prosecutors can only legally claim 20 hours of overtime each month.
Meetings, court hearings and other obligations ensure that prosecutors are forced to write case reports in the evenings and over weekends, she said.
“Most of the time, I have used up my overtime quota by the 10th day,” she said. “Given that we are responsible for appearing in all court hearings in person, going through documents and writing up all reports, there is no way we can get everything done in the time we are legally allowed, so the result is long extra hours without pay.”
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
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