Premier Lin Chuan (林全) yesterday opened a Facebook account to “facilitate communication” with the public, after meeting with labor groups on Friday, the second such meeting the Cabinet has scheduled for this month.
“After three months in office, in my opinion, the role of the premier is like a chief executive officer, who can lead people forward only if he has the ability to solve problems,” he said in his first Facebook post.
There are many department chiefs under a chief executive officer and they are the ones who handle the issues while the chief executive officer is the one with the overall perspective, Lin said in a video clip he attached to his post.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
“But in reality, there is the question of whether the chief executive officer should jump in when a department is having problems,” he added.
“If I do jump in, I would be less like a chief executive officer and more like a factory chief, which I do not consider a normal situation. Maybe it is necessary during a transition or at an initial stage, but after a while, when the department chiefs have a good understanding of the chief executive officer’s ideas and achieves a consistent pace, the chief executive officer should return to where he ought to be,” Lin said.
Regarding the government’s economic policies, the nation should try to find an answer to the question of why Taiwan’s industrial transformation has been relatively slow in the past few years, Lin said.
“The main drive of the economic policy was economic growth, and growth only. With that as the only goal, many problems have been put aside. So our economic policy will focus more on employment than on growth. When the employment rate rises, which helps increase overall productivity, employees’ wages go up and the worsening of the income gap can be curbed,” Lin said.
“For productivity to increase, innovation is necessary. Our future direction is precisely innovation, employment and distribution: Spurring economic growth by narrowing the gap between rich and poor people, and by raising workers’ incomes,” he added.
Less-than-ideal quality of life is one of the consequences of prioritizing economic growth over any other goal, Lin said when explaining why social safety and political reforms are among the government’s top priorities.
“In a modern nation or society, every person is precious and every citizen is the government’s baby to be cherished. The government will undertake comprehensive and appropriate consideration when implementing policies so that the public receives the best care possible,” he said.
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