The mayor of Pingtung County’s Jhutian Township (竹田) has been sentenced for profiting from the sale of sanitation team positions. Corruption cases involving the sale of such positions in local townships and municipalities have occurred repeatedly, highlighting the urgent need to improve anti-corruption mechanisms to prevent similar incidents from happening again. To address this issue, I recommend the following measures be implemented:
First, the authority of locally elected administrative heads to appoint personnel should be restricted. Sanitation teams employed by township and city offices are governed by the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) and their recruitment is determined by locally elected officials. As a result, these officials often treat these positions as bargaining tools, using sanitation personnel recruitment processes to solicit bribes from potential applicants or their relatives. In light of this, such positions should no longer be independently filled by township or city offices, instead, recruitment should be conducted via standardized examinations handled by county or city governments, as they are the superior authorities.
The exam format and admission criteria should follow the model of national civil service examinations, and all recruitment information for sanitation worker positions should be published on the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration’s recruitment system alongside civil servant vacancies. This would strengthen the openness, transparency, impartiality and fairness of the recruitment process for sanitation personnel, effectively limiting opportunities for locally elected officials to engage in corruption or manipulation.
Second, locally elected officials must be aware of laws and regulations. The Ministry of the Interior, which is responsible for supervising local governments, should require that all locally elected administrative officials undergo a set number of hours of legal and disciplinary education between their election and inauguration. They should also be required to participate in related annual training while they are in office, ensuring that they are familiar with key laws and regulations that govern the exercise of public authority — such as the Ethics Guidelines for Civil Servants (公務員廉政倫理規範), the Government Procurement Act (政府採購法), the Act on Recusal of Public Servants Due to Conflicts of Interest (公職人員利益衝突迴避法) and the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例) — which would prevent officials from contravening regulations due to insufficient legal knowledge.
Last is to deepen public awareness of anti-corruption. Those involved in such corruption cases are not limited to locally elected officials, but also include citizens who offer bribes in exchange for employment. Therefore, county and city governments should strengthen public education on anti-corruption, and awareness of laws and regulations. By employing diverse means such as lectures, outreach campaigns and promotional videos, they should work to deepen the public’s understanding of integrity and the rule of law, encourage citizens to resist and report acts of favoritism or profiteering, and foster an atmosphere of clean and transparent local governance.
Wang Yu-pei is a civil servant.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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