A Tourism Bureau official who ordered two subordinates stationed at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to meet his son was yesterday demoted and given a major demerit, and one of the subordinates was also given a major demerit.
The bureau’s Performance Evaluation Committee decided on the punishments after reviewing the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ investigation into the actions of the official, surnamed Lin (林).
The ministry’s investigation on Monday found that Lin had verbally asked for permission for leave to pick up his son, who was returning from the Philippines on March 20, at the airport, but his request was not recorded in the bureau’s human resources system.
Photo: Hsiao Yu-hsin, Taipei Times
Lin telephoned the Tourist Service Center at the airport and asked staff members stationed there to “have coffee with his son” — a euphemistic way of asking them to meet him — the investigation found.
The two staffers were later identified as a center director surnamed Chang (張) and a junior employee that Chang took with him to meet Lin’s son and have coffee.
Lin’s son and the lower ranking employee tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday, and were identified by Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) as Case No. 277 and Case No. 269 respectively.
The employee’s five-year-old son was on Monday confirmed to have contracted COVID-19, making him Case No. 299.
Lin was punished for failing to follow procedure in requesting leave and for contravening the nation’s disease prevention policies by asking subordinates to meet with someone who had just returned from abroad, while Chang was penalized for contravening disease-prevention policies and abusing his authority to access the airport’s restricted area.
Less than an hour after the committee announced its decision, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) wrote on Facebook that he had decided on Monday to remove the official from the office, demote him and give him a major demerit as he should bear the brunt of the blame.
“It was heartbreaking to know that a five-year-old child contracted the virus because of a Tourism Bureau official’s negligence,” the minister wrote.
The airport is the first line of defense to prevent the spread of disease, the minister said.
Chang should not have been attending to the needs of his supervisor’s son, and his action led to the infection of another employee and his five-year-old child, the minister said.
“We have tracked the whereabouts last week of the bureau official and disinfected the places that he had visited. All Tourism Bureau employees have now been asked to wear masks to work and been moved to work in different offices to avoid cluster infections,” he said.
This story has been updated since it was first published.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS