The New Power Party (NPP) yesterday proposed a draft “nonprofit corporation act” aimed at tightening oversight of government-funded corporations.
While the development of nonprofit corporations that are partially funded by the government has been on the rise, there are few laws regulating such entities, leading to the privatization of many, which results in public assets becoming private property, NPP Legislator Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said.
“Corporations that derive more than 50 percent of their funding from the government have to be supervised by the Legislative Yuan, but many corporations have escaped government oversight by lowering the amount of government funding,” Hsu said.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
“Some government-funded corporations were transformed into private companies, and government funds became company assets at taxpayers’ expense,” he said.
The draft act would allow the government to increase its holding in a public-turned-private corporation to restore it to a public corporation, Hsu said, citing the privatization of the CTCI Foundation, which was founded by state-run oil refiner CPC Corp, Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) and Taiwan Sugar Corp in 1959, but later shed government control by diluting its share of state funding.
A corporation over which the government has de facto control is recognized as a public entity answerable to the government even if government funding is less than 50 percent of the firm’s budget, according the draft act, Hsu said.
Examples include the Institute for Information Industry, the Commerce Development Research Institute, the Printing Technology Research Institute and the Taiwan Design Center, he said.
“The draft act would also prohibit sinecure appointment by temporarily stripping the pensions of retired government officials who work for public corporations,” Hsu said.
The party also raised a motion to order Taipower to report to the Legislative Yuan before a reactor of the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City is reactivated.
The plant’s No. 2 reactor automatically shut down after a generator disconnection on May 16 for reasons that are not yet clear.
Parts of the power generation system were destroyed in the incident.
“I saw three surge arresters that were completely burned out, while other facilities were damaged by what appeared to be a blast,” NPP Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said. “Taipower has not yet clarified the cause of the generator disconnection or the blast, so we ask the company to make a formal report to the legislature before the Atomic Energy Council will approve reactivation.”
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