The government would soon review measures in place to test civil servants’ loyalty to the country, particularly measures that should be administered to those who have access to highly classified information, the Executive Yuan said yesterday.
The issue has been under close scrutiny following a series of highly publicized espionage cases, including one involving Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member Ho Jen-chieh (何仁傑), who has been detained and held incommunicado since Saturday for allegedly spying for China while serving as assistant to then-minister of foreign affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮).
President William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday told a meeting of the DPP Central Standing Committee that party officials must from now on report their trips to China, Hong Kong and Macau prior to departure.
Photo courtesy of the Executive Yuan
Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) also told a news conference in Taipei on Wednesday that the council is proposing an amendment to 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) that would regulate legislators’ visits to China.
Although the act stipulates that people engaging in business involving national security or confidential matters in agencies related to national defense, foreign affairs, technology, intelligence, mainland affairs or other related agencies should apply for permission to enter China, legislators have never abided by the rule, Liang said.
At the weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) also asked Minister Without Portfolio Ma Yung-cheng (馬永成) to meet with national security officials and propose within two weeks ways to improve and enforce loyalty tests for government employees, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference after the meeting.
“The government has been cracking down on espionage cases in light of the increasingly intense infiltration of foreign hostile regimes. As hostile regimes often seek to infiltrate agencies handing highly sensitive information, the premier said that the government needs to bolster national security mechanisms while imposing severe sanctions on individuals breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法),” Lee quoted Cho as saying.
Article 4 of the Civil Service Employment Act (公務人員任用法) stipulates that civil servants involved in national security and major national interests need to undergo special identity checks, Lee said.
“The current system needs to be re-examined, whether it needs improvement or it has been loosely enforced. The system should prevent foreign hostile regimes from infiltrating government agencies,” she quoted Cho as saying.
The premier believes that most civil servants follow the law and work for the people, but the government needs to strengthen the current system to safeguard national security and protect our democratic way of life, Lee said.
“The current loyalty test is administered based on a government worker’s job level and title, rather than on the security level of the information to which they have access. This might be the general direction of the change that would be considered,” Lee said.
Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Director-General Su Chun-jung (蘇俊榮) said that diplomatic officers involved in Ho’s case underwent loyalty checks when they initially reported for jobs.
“We might consider administering loyalty checks annually,” Su said.
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