Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday announced a major reshuffle of department chiefs as he prepares for the start of his second term on Tuesday next week.
A resignation ceremony was held at Taipei City Hall yesterday morning, with all department heads in attendance and Taipei Deputy Mayor Teng Chia-chi (鄧家基) representing them to hand in the resignation name list to Ko.
Two of the three deputy mayors — Charles Lin (林欽榮) and Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻) — are among those who are leaving their posts.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
After thanking the department heads, Ko said that when he assumed the post four years ago, he promised that city government workers would not have to serve any political party or ideology, nor the mayor; they only have to serve the public.
He is happy that his administrative team was not involved in graft scandals, which is a big change compared with previous administrations, because civil servants can finally perform their duties according to the law, make the most of their professional skills and be innovative, Ko said.
Stressing the importance of an open government and public participation, Ko said: “Openness and transparency are political ideals that this city government have gradually realized.”
He thanked the department heads for their efforts and said he hoped that they would bring the new political culture to their new positions.
Civil servants ranked grade 10 and above in the city government have all been promoted through a selection mechanism that includes voting by peers, so they no longer needed to “pull strings” to earn credit and could focus on their performance, Ko 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