A Tourism Bureau official who ordered two subordinates stationed at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport to meet his son was yesterday demoted and given a major demerit, and one of the subordinates was also given a major demerit.
The bureau’s Performance Evaluation Committee decided on the punishments after reviewing the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ investigation into the actions of the official, surnamed Lin (林).
The ministry’s investigation on Monday found that Lin had verbally asked for permission for leave to pick up his son, who was returning from the Philippines on March 20, at the airport, but his request was not recorded in the bureau’s human resources system.
Photo: Hsiao Yu-hsin, Taipei Times
Lin telephoned the Tourist Service Center at the airport and asked staff members stationed there to “have coffee with his son” — a euphemistic way of asking them to meet him — the investigation found.
The two staffers were later identified as a center director surnamed Chang (張) and a junior employee that Chang took with him to meet Lin’s son and have coffee.
Lin’s son and the lower ranking employee tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday, and were identified by Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) as Case No. 277 and Case No. 269 respectively.
The employee’s five-year-old son was on Monday confirmed to have contracted COVID-19, making him Case No. 299.
Lin was punished for failing to follow procedure in requesting leave and for contravening the nation’s disease prevention policies by asking subordinates to meet with someone who had just returned from abroad, while Chang was penalized for contravening disease-prevention policies and abusing his authority to access the airport’s restricted area.
Less than an hour after the committee announced its decision, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) wrote on Facebook that he had decided on Monday to remove the official from the office, demote him and give him a major demerit as he should bear the brunt of the blame.
“It was heartbreaking to know that a five-year-old child contracted the virus because of a Tourism Bureau official’s negligence,” the minister wrote.
The airport is the first line of defense to prevent the spread of disease, the minister said.
Chang should not have been attending to the needs of his supervisor’s son, and his action led to the infection of another employee and his five-year-old child, the minister said.
“We have tracked the whereabouts last week of the bureau official and disinfected the places that he had visited. All Tourism Bureau employees have now been asked to wear masks to work and been moved to work in different offices to avoid cluster infections,” he said.
This story has been updated since it was first published.
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