With regard to a principal not being punished after being found guilty of sexual harassment at a private vocational high school in Taitung County, New Power Party Legislator Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸) filed an interpellation against Minister of Education Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮) at a meeting of the legislature on Oct. 18 and questioned the ministry and the K-12 Education Administration for allowing the principal to “retire with honor” in June and take up an administrative position at a private school in Taoyuan.
An alumna of the school in 2015 told the media that the principal, surnamed Lan, frequently called her and sent her text messages when she was enrolled there in 2009, saying: “I owe you a lot from my previous life” and “I want you to be with me.”
NOT FOLLOWED UP
After receiving the report from the alumna, the ministry confirmed that it was a case of sexual harassment and ordered the principal to apologize to her.
Later, Lan was found to have neither made an apology nor attended eight hours of gender equality education classes, as the ministry had ordered.
Even worse, the vocational school’s board members suspended him, but continued to pay him for doing absolutely nothing.
On June 1, the principal “retired with honor.”
LOOPHOLE
Article 25 of the Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法) stipulates that the competent authority must order the “authorized agency” to take disciplinary measures and impose penalties on the offender, but it does not stipulate any penalty on that agency if it fails to comply with the law.
The loophole allowed the board members to shield the guilty principal. The ministry issued official requests to the school and its board members 15 times, yielding no results.
One wonders when the principal will apologize to the victim.
Does this not constitute dereliction of duty by a corrupt ministry?
It is time to demand that inefficient and corrupt education ministry officials step down from office.
ROOT CAUSE
Their corrupt nature should be attributed to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), as corruption remains among the party’s government officials.
Otherwise, loud applause and cheers would not have erupted from KMT officials — notably KMT Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) — when the KMT’s Evaluation and Discipline Committee Chairman Chen Keng-chin (陳庚金), the former director-general of the Executive Yuan’s Central Personnel Administration, publicly called for civil servants to “goof around as much as possible and milk [their] jobs for all they are worth” in protest against the government’s pension reforms.
NO ACTION
Non-partisan Solidarity Union Legislator May Chin (高金素梅), who presided over the legislative meeting, said that the ministry should have been enraged when no concrete actions were taken by the second time it sent an official request.
The ministry had trampled on its own laws by allowing 15 requests to pile up, she said, adding that the ministry is to blame.
There are too many degenerate education officials to count, and it is intolerable that they are not eliminated altogether. The government should at least cut their monthly pension payments.
Teng Hon-yuan is an associate professor at Aletheia University.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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