Accepting gifts and attending banquets are on the increase for Taipei City Government officials and civil servants, with the police and rapid transit departments leading the way, according to information released by Taipei City Councilor Wu Su-yao (吳思瑤) yesterday.
Wu, of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), said the figures indicated a rising trend through each of the eight years of Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin’s (郝龍斌) administration, with each city department receiving more than 2,000 gifts and attending 500 banquets per year on average.
“However, the Taipei City Government Ethics Department found violations in just 18 cases,” she said. “This shows Hau’s promise of running a ‘clean government’ is all talk and no action.”
Reviewing the city government’s registry books, Wu said that city departments received an average of 1,700 gifts in 2008, which climbed to about 2,100 last year. Taipei City Hospital led the tally, with 3,400 gifts last year, followed by the city’s police department at 2,000 gifts and the city’s Secretariat department in third place.
She said that banquet attendance by each city department rose from about 400 yearly to more than 500 last year, led by the Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DORTS), followed by the police and the Department of Labor.
Wu said it is worrying that figures showed that such agencies regularly accept gifts from and attend banquets hosted by companies they deal with in official capacities.
“The rapid transit department engages in engineering projects with huge price tags. The police should be upholding the law when conducting investigation and legal proceedings. However, they love to attend banquets and possibly come under undue influence and lobbying. Hau should look into these city departments with so many suspicious cases of violating ethical conduct,” Wu said.
She listed violations — including an official being fined for accepting four eggfruits (仙桃) and one for receiving several watermelons — that she said were insignificant cases.
“However, nowhere on the city’s registry books can we see the listing of the then-mayor Ma Ying-jeou’s [馬英九] shark fin soup banquet hosted by Fubon Group in 2002. This clearly shows the city’s ethics department only goes after the little guys and is afraid of going after the big fish,” Wu said, referring to a case in which Ma allegedly helped to facilitate the Fubon Group’s takeover of Taipei Bank in exchange for a political donation of NT$15 million.
In response, city ethics department deputy head Tseng Ching-jui (曾慶瑞) said the increase in gifts and banquet attendance indicated that departments are following “clean government” measures and complying with registry rules.
“The high number by DORTS was due to attending construction site openings and project completions. The police department had to follow custom when invited to festival banquets by local temples, by volunteer police groups or those who had received police help. Some banquet invitations were registered, but superiors told them not to attend. If we find any violation against ethical conduct, the violators will be punished,” Tseng said.
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