Civil servants might not enjoy their iron rice bowl for much longer as the Examination Yuan will set up a review system to weed out civil servants with at least two years of subpar performance, Examination Yuan President John Kuan (關中) said yesterday.
“Without an elimination system, [the civil service] is just like a pond of stagnant water. I do not want to see this phenomenon continuing,” Kuan said during his address at the government body’s New Year’s press conference yesterday.
Kuan said the Examination Yuan, the government branch responsible for the country’s civil service, will soon revise the existing performance review system for all civil servants, which he said failed to appraise the performance of individuals.
“Over the years, the performance review system has been no more than a formality. Particularly the performance review bonus, which has long been regarded by civil servants as part of their salary,” Kuan said.
Kuan said the Examination Yuan wanted to set up an evaluation system based on the Singaporean model, under which civil servants with poor performance are granted very little in bonuses or denied them altogether.
Civil servants who fail to obtain a performance review bonus for two consecutive years and are denied the bonus for a third year will be laid off, Kuan said.
Meanwhile, Kuan said that English would be included as a test subject in all civil service examinations starting next year, with the exception of the examinations held for disabled people, Aborigines and entry-level jobs for transportation.
“English proficiency is important as you can’t reach out to the world without the ability, not to mention the capability to garner information,” Kuan said.
Minister of Examinations Kirby Yang (楊朝祥) said English was currently included in 80 percent of the nation’s 315 categories of civil service exams.
English proficiency will not be included in the civil servant examinations held for Aborigines until next year, while the weight of English scores on the examinations will be 10 percent lower than that on the examinations held for the general public, Yang said.
An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible. It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor. The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰)
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WAR SIMULATION: The developers of the board game ‘2045’ consulted experts and analysts, and made maps based on real-life Chinese People’s Liberation Army exercises To stop invading Chinese forces seizing Taiwan, board gamer Ruth Zhong chooses the nuclear option: Dropping an atomic bomb on Taipei to secure the nation’s freedom and her victory. The Taiwanese board game 2045 is a zero-sum contest of military strategy and individual self-interest that puts players on the front lines of a simulated Chinese attack. Their battlefield game tactics would determine the theoretical future of Taiwan, which in the real world faces the constant threat of a Chinese invasion. “The most interesting part of this game is that you have to make continuous decisions based on the evolving situation,
Actor Lee Wei (李威) was released on bail on Monday after being named as a suspect in the death of a woman whose body was found in the meeting place of a Buddhist group in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) last year, prosecutors said. Lee, 44, was released on NT$300,000 (US$9,148) bail, while his wife, surnamed Chien (簡), was released on NT$150,000 bail after both were summoned to give statements regarding the woman’s death. The home of Lee, who has retreated from the entertainment business in the past few years, was also searched by prosecutors and police earlier on Monday. Lee was questioned three
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