Former minister of education Huang Jong-tsun (黃榮村) yesterday told lawmakers that he would support any effort to move the nation toward a sounder constitutional system, including abolishing the Examination Yuan, if he were to be confirmed as its head.
Huang, who was nominated by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to be Examination Yuan president, made the remark as the Legislative Yuan in Taipei reviewed his nomination.
Abolishing the Examination Yuan and the Control Yuan has been advocated by many people for a long time, and he would support any effort aimed at boosting the government’s efficacy and improving the nation’s constitutional system, Huang said in his speech.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
If the decision was made to abolish the Executive Yuan, he would not seek to cling to his post, but would draft measure to phase it out, while ensuring that its functions of designing civil service entrance tests and evaluating civil servants’ performances be continued, he said.
Traditional paper tests alone cannot meet the needs of society and the government for capable civil servants, so he would take into account the challenges civil servants would encounter on their jobs, their mobility between different fields and whether they have an international perspective, he said.
He would evaluate the need for a two-step entrance test process for civil engineers and other professions concerned with public safety by requiring them to obtain a general license before passing specialized tests administered by professional associations, he said.
The single-track testing system for civil servants, researchers and teachers is no longer “appropriate,” he said, adding that the rules should be amended to separate the testing of the three professions, which would improve the nation’s competitiveness.
During a question-and-answer session with Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇), Huang was asked whether he would support the inclusion of Taiwanese history as a subject in civil service tests.
Civil servants handling Hakka or Aboriginal affairs are required to take tests on Hakka and Aboriginal history, but those testing for positions in other agencies are not required to be tested on the nation’s history, Wang said.
If civil servants are familiar with the nation’s history, it would significantly benefit their jobs and the nation’s development, he said.
A civil servant concerned with building roads or dams could not do their job well if they did not know the history of a locality, he said.
Huang said that he supports including tests on the nation’s history if the responsibilities associated with a position would benefit from such a move, adding that he would look into the matter.
Taiwanese history could also be included as part of the training program for newly hired civil servants before they are assigned their first jobs, he added.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS