The controversy surrounding the appointment of former health minister Lin Fang-yue (林芳郁) as the next superintendent of the Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH) continued after an advertisement appeared in a newspaper yesterday accusing government officials of “shaming the medical field.”
The Executive Yuan’s Veterans Affairs Commission announcement last week of Lin’s appointment as the next superintendent of TVGH will take effect on Jan. 16. However, the decision attracted criticism from current and retired hospital staff because Lin will be the hospital’s first superintendent not promoted from within the VGH system.
Yesterday’s advertisement on the front page of the Chinese-language United Daily News contained a letter criticizing President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Department of Health Minister Yeh Ching-chuan (葉金川) and Lin for “shaming the medical field” in Taiwan. The advertisement was anonymous, and ran under the name of “a group of humiliated medical staff.”
In the letter, Lin’s appointment was described as “shocking” and “out of the blue.” The letter also urged the Executive Yuan to retract its decision, or the hospital’s top management would advise against Lin’s inauguration.
Yeh denied the appointment was politically motivated and said, “President Ma was not involved in the decision-making.”
“The Executive Yuan has been planning to re-organize Taiwan’s medical facilities, including biomedical developments and medical resources in rural areas,” Yeh said. “Hospitals such as VGH and National Taiwan University Hospital are national hospitals, so there are many areas in which we need the VGH to help us out.”
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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