Hsinchu County Councilor Yan Yung-chiu (嚴永秋) last year used only 42 words to sum up a 13-day “overseas investigative trip” to Europe, again drawing attention to the rampant practice of elected officials squandering taxpayers’ money on personal vacations disguised as business trips.
The independent councilor’s report for his trip to Austria, Croatia and Slovenia from April 12 to April 24 was uncovered by netizens and posted on Professional Technology Temple, the nation’s largest online bulletin board system.
The report was quickly picked up by local media, because of its sheer absurdity.
Yan used two short paragraphs to summarize the trip that was supposed to be about drawing lessons from the experiences of other countries.
“One, the people are kind and the historic sites there are well preserved and protected from human damage; two, they did a good job ‘greenifying’ their countries, where air quality and transport facilities are good. We should learn from them,” Yan wrote.
Even more ludicrous than a councilor — who gets a monthly salary of more than NT$75,000 (US$2,451) — writing a report akin to an elementary-school student’s homework is that five of the 42 Mandarin characters he wrote were incorrect.
Under the Regulations on Allowances for Elected Representatives and Subsidies for Village Chiefs and Borough Wardens (地方民意代表費用支給及村里長事務補助費補助條例), special municipality councilors are allocated an annual budget of NT$150,000 for overseas investigative trips, while city and county councilors receive NT$100,000.
Given that there are more than 900 city and county councilors nationwide, these trips cost the state coffers at least NT$90 million each year.
As the law does not provide a clear definition of what constitutes an overseas investigative trip, nor does it stipulate criteria for reimbursement, lax regulations have made it very easy for councilors to exploit the budget for personal interests.
Yan is not the only councilor to treat public money as a personal travel fund.
In 2013, Taichung City Councilor Tuan Wei-yu (段緯宇) of the People First Party described his four-day investigative trip to Japan in three characters: “yao siu zan” (妖受讚), which in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) means “damn good.”
Despite the scandal, Tuan was re-elected in 2016, which just goes to show how forgiving and forgetful voters are, and why it is difficult to purge local politics of unscrupulous practices.
A list of dubious trip reports compiled by New Power Party Miaoli County councilor candidate Tseng Wen-hsueh (曾玟學) helped shed some light on the scope of the problem.
Tseng found that in 2016 and last year, nearly 80 percent of the overseas investigative trip reports submitted by Miaoli County councilors contained fewer than four sentences or 100 words, while some even plagiarized the content of travel agency Web sites.
Abusing the overseas investigative trip budget might seem like a relatively harmless practice, but it signals a dangerous tendency to compromise ethics for personal gain and could easily escalate into more serious misconduct, such as bribery or corruption.
This is why the public should stop condoning the practice and letting it get buried in the news cycle. People should be angry and demand stricter rules to send politicians the message that small acts of dishonesty will no longer be tolerated.
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