Premier Yu Shyi-kun said yesterday he wasn't considering any potential candidate to replace Lee Ming-liang (李明亮), director-general of the Department of Health, who has again tendered his resignation.
"I'm not giving any thought to Lee's successor now because I'm still trying to persuade him to forget about the idea," Yu told reporters during his inspection trip to Hsinchu County yesterday morning.
But speculation is rife that Twu Shiing-jer (
PHOTO: LU CHUN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
Twu served as the director of the Bureau of Health when Chen was the mayor of Taipei.
Twu also recently was branded as a "Ma Ying-jeou (
But Twu dismissed yesterday speculation that he will replace Lee. "No one has ever contacted me about this matter," he said.
Yu confirmed yesterday that Lee did offer his resignation orally.
"He first mentioned the idea to me when I was organizing the new Cabinet line-up in February," Yu said. "He told me that he's afraid his health won't allow him to continue the job for another two years. He's mentioned this to me more than once since then."
The 66-year-old Lee has been suffering from high blood pressure and asthma.
Lee, who is on a two-year leave from the Tzu Chi Medical University in Hualien County where he serves as the president, told reporters during a press conference yesterday afternoon that he would like to go back to school for the fall semester.
"It's time for me to pass the baton to the up-and-coming," he said.
Huang, a close friend of Lee, dismissed speculation that Lee was asked to resign so Twu could take up the post to help the party in the year-end race for Taipei mayor.
"It's ridiculous," Huang said. "His resignation has nothing to do with the year-end mayoral election nor did he offer his resignation under any pressure."
If there's any reason at all why Lee wants to quit, Huang said, it's the financial problems at the national health insurance system.
Claiming losses of between NT$1.5 billion and NT$2 billion monthly, the Bureau of National Health Insurance proposed to the Department of Health in March an increase in rates for full-time workers from the current 4.25 percent to 4.91 percent of their monthly salary starting in July.
The premium rate has remained at 4.25 percent since the national health insurance system was launched in March 1995.
Although Lee endorsed the proposal, the Cabinet, however, swept aside the plan.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS