Premier-designate Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday announced more new members of his Cabinet that is to take office on May 20, with five of those appointed keeping their posts and one new face being introduced.
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲), Overseas Community Affairs Council Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青), Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) and Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Director-General Su Chun-jung (蘇俊榮) are to keep their posts, Cho told a news conference in Taipei.
Acting Minister of Agriculture Chen Junne-jih (陳駿季) is to formally head the agency in the new Cabinet, Cho said.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The only new face announced yesterday was Tainan Research, Development and Evaluation Commission head Chen Shu-tzu (陳淑姿), who was named to lead the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics.
Most of the people announced yesterday are agency heads, and they have all worked in the public sector for decades and are seasoned officials, Cho said.
“Their rich experience and commitment to teamwork would facilitate the new government’s transition and drive the implementation of policies,” he said.
Cho said that Chen Shu-tzu has served at the local government level for years and was involved in the merger of Tainan County and Tainan City into a special municipality in 2010.
The 67-year-old also participated in financial planning in Tainan and helped significantly reduce the debt owed by the city government, which allowed more funding to be allocated to local flood control efforts, he added.
The premier-designate said he hoped to take advantage of her expertise to expand the central government’s investments in society and allocate resources fairly.
Chen Junne-jih, 65, was deputy agriculture minister before being named acting minister in September last year after his predecessor, Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲), resigned over a controversy involving imported eggs.
Chuang and Hsu were deputy heads of their respective agencies before assuming their current posts in January last year following a Cabinet reshuffle.
Cho lauded Kuan’s efforts to promote marine conservation laws and her experience in overseeing the Coast Guard Administration, including its efforts to deal with unidentified boats illegally entering the country’s waters.
Su is to remain in the post that he has held since 2022.
Cho commended Su for his efforts to digitize personnel management and said that he would continue to serve civil servants and the public attentively.
With the announcements, 26 members of the new Cabinet have been named, including the premier, vice premier, Cabinet secretary-general and Cabinet spokesperson.
Still to be named are the foreign affairs and defense ministers, the head of the Mainland Affairs Council, and seven to nine ministers without portfolio.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
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
RSS