In the wake of controversy surrounding Taitung County Commissioner Kuang Li-chen (鄺麗貞) over her alleged abuse of public funds for overseas trips, Taipei Songshan Airport and Taitung Railway Station recently removed advertising billboards that featured Kuang promoting tourism in Taitung.
The advertisement removed by the airport carried a large picture of Kuang and her signature with a small logo reading “Festival of Austronesian Culture in Taitung.” The airport said it removed the advertisement at the request of the Government Information Office (GIO).
The GIO is in charge of allotting advertising boxes installed in about 80 public sites around the country such as airports and railway stations. Central government agencies and local governments can place advertisements in the boxes to publicize government policies or activities.
Design drafts of the advertisements must be approved before being placed in the light boxes.
“We asked the advertising light box to be removed because it was not the one that was originally approved by the GIO,” Chia Huey (賈慧), director of the GIO’s Department of Domestic Information, said yesterday.
The original advertisement proposal carried a larger logo and a smaller image of Kuang.
Meanwhile, a TVBS report said that Kao Ming-kung (高銘光), the station master of Taitung Railway Station, said on Friday the station would remove a huge ad placard featuring Kuang dressed as a worker in a tea field.
Kao said the station provided the advertisement space to the Taitung County Government for free to promote its tourism and agricultural products, “but the meaning of the placard was different now.”
Kuang has come under fire after she took a trip to Europe last month as Typhoon Fung-wong approached Taiwan.
She has also been criticized for spending millions of dollars of taxpayer money on overseas trips since taking office as county commissioner two years ago.
The Cabinet’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission said it would establish a system to assess the effectiveness of overseas inspection trips by central government officials.
With regard to the chiefs of local governments, the Executive Yuan’s Central Personnel Administration Minister Cheng Ching-hsiu (陳清秀) said his agency would suggest Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) establish a set of standards for them to follow when planning overseas inspection trips.
Local government chiefs are required to inform the premier before leaving the country, but the premier is not authorized to approve or reject their travel plans.
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