The Control Yuan has censured the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ Maritime and Port Bureau, citing the bureau for dereliction of duty leading to more than 2,600 abnormal licensing incidents by the Central Maritime Affairs Center.
According to a report by Control Yuan members Lin Kuo-ming (林國明), Wang Li-chen (王麗珍) and Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) released on Tuesday, the center’s maritime transport technical personnel management system provided users unrestricted access and lacked management, overriding paper approval and allowing individuals to conduct illegal activities.
The system lacks a mutual check and cross-analysis mechanism, which has allowed center personnel to abuse their positions and create more than 2,600 allegedly illegal permits for yachts or other powered vessels, the report said, adding that the problem has greatly undermined government integrity.
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
The Regulations to Manage Skippers of Yachts and Power-driven Small Ships (遊艇或動力小船駕駛執照之異動登記及換、補發作業) have been treated as mere guidelines, and the center’s receipt, approval, issue and re-issue of licenses and permits for these seagoing vessels are not properly documented, the report said.
There are no measures for cross-validation, nor measures to regulate the use of official seals, leading to blatant abuse of the center’s authority to issue licenses, it added.
The center, founded in 2012, is tasked with retaining administrative files for 10 years to facilitate the hand-off of affairs in the event of organizational reshuffling, the report said.
However, the center’s staff has destroyed files on license registration and issuing for more than 1,000 vehicles, which contravenes the Archives Act (檔案法), it said.
The bureau, as the center’s direct supervisor, is censured, as it has failed to establish a proper standard handling these matters, and has not acted to oversee affairs, the report said.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS