Six Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilors yesterday filed a lawsuit against Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), accusing him of negligence after a city contractor was found to have been paid about 30 times the market price for roadside flowers.
Documents obtained from the New Construction Department at the city’s Bureau of Public Works show a contractor working on an overpass beautification project billed the city millions of dollars above market prices routinely paid by government agencies to buy plants and flowers.
In one case, Join Engineering Consultants (昭凌工程顧問), billed the city more than NT$120,000 (US$3,748) for planting 400 Wedelia underneath the Xinsheng Overpass. The tiny yellow flower normally retails for NT$9.
PHOTO: CNA
The company also billed the city government more than NT$425 each for bulbs of an evergreen vine for which the city’s parks department normally pays about NT$100.
A small seashore ardisia bulb that routinely sells for NT$38 was billed for NT$580.
The price differential has left DPP councilors wondering whether the contract involved kickbacks to city officials or if the officials in charge of screening the costs simply failed to take a close look.
“The Taipei City Government is either very good at spending money or simply careless in how it chooses to spread it. Regardless, it’s a sloppy waste of taxpayers’ money,” Taipei City Councilor Yen Sheng-kuan (顏聖冠) said.
The city councilors also accused Hau of illegally giving the contractor special benefits.
The entire sum under question is just under NT$24 million, part of a NT$262 million contract to beautify the Xinsheng Overpass.
The cost of the flowers has also raised questions over their relationship to the Taipei International Flora Exposition because the overpass runs alongside the main site.
Yen said the beautification contract, while not counted in the expo budget, should still be seen as a flora expo project, adding that there could be other cases of excess inside the expo budget.
Taipei City Government spokesperson Chao Shin-pin (趙心屏) said the Join Engineering Consultants contract was part of the Xinsheng Overpass reconstruction project.
The overpass underwent a renovation in 2008 at a cost of NT$1.3 billion and was reopened last year, she said, adding that the flowers and plants were used to decorate the bridge.
“The project has nothing to do with the flora expo, we will not allow anyone to criticize the expo using information that is incorrect. We will exercise our legal rights against politicians, talk show guests or media outlets that spread rumors about the expo,” she said.
The city urged the city councilors to apologize both to Hau and for wasting judicial resources.
Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Yong-ping (李永萍) said the overpass project was handled by the New Construction Department and supervised by the Bureau of Public Works. Join Engineering Consultants should also be held responsible, she said.
“DPP councilors know that we have divisions of labor in the city government and that the budget and the implementation of the project was handled by the [New Construction] department. How would Mayor Hau know details of the project?” Lee asked a press conference, slamming the DPP councilors for politicizing the issue by suing Hau.
Meanwhile, the bureau held a disciplinary committee meeting yesterday morning and announced that it would be reprimanding New Construction Department chief engineer Chang Li-yen (章立言) and section chief Chen Chih-sheng (陳智盛) for their poor supervision.
The city’s Department of Ethics said it has also reported Join Engineering Consultants to prosecutors for investigation into whether corruption had been involved.
A spokesperson for the company told the Taipei Times they had not received any information on the city’s investigation.
Speaking on condition of anonymity due to a privacy clause in the contract, the spokesperson denied over-billing the city for flowers and was considering a lawsuit.
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
RSS