Taipei city councilors yesterday asked Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and former deputy mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) to apologize to city residents for spending up to NT$106 million (US$3.3 million) on this year’s Taipei Expo, while avoiding a city council review.
The Taipei City Government held the event at the Taipei Expo Park from Aug. 27 to Sept. 11.
City councilors in August criticized the Ko administration for using the city’s second reserve fund — about NT$29.6 million from last year and about NT$49 million from this year — to host the event, seemingly to avoid a requirement that an expenditure of NT$50 million or more be approved by the city council.
Photo: CNA
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) on Sunday wrote on Facebook that a Taipei Department of Government Ethics report revealed that in addition to tapping into the second reserve fund, the city government used about NT$12.62 million from 15 city departments on the expo.
Wu, along with DPP Legislator Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) and Taipei City Councilor Chien Shu-pei (簡舒培), yesterday told a news conference in Taipei that Ko’s administration has poor financial discipline, and questioned whether Huang had ordered city departments to organize the expo.
About 105,000 people attended the 12-day event, which was originally to cost about NT$86.1 million, but a city councilor later discovered that the true budget was hidden among the operational budgets of departments and the total cost was as much as NT$169.4 million, Rosalia Wu said.
This year’s Keelung City Expo cost NT$40 million and attracted more than 1 million attendees over 10 days, she said, adding that the Keelung City Government had proposed the budget in the previous year and it passed a city council review.
Wu Pei-yi said the Department of Government Ethics’ report showed that money for the Taipei Expo came from the city’s first and second reserve funds, the annual operational budgets of 15 departments and a special budget to build a new MRT line.
At the news conference, Chien showed a photograph of a note allegedly written by Huang on Oct. 4 last year, instructing a department to use NT$9 million from the city’s second reserve fund for the expo at the direction of the mayor.
Chien asked why Huang skipped the budget allocation review.
She also called the expo a “graduation ceremony” for Ko and a “red carpet” for Huang, who in late August resigned as deputy mayor to run for Taipei mayor as an independent candidate, with Ko’s endorsement.
Huang yesterday said that she wrote the note, but that the instructions were based on prior discussions and made at the direction of Ko.
Formal documents were signed afterward, so the procedure could stand up to scrutiny by the National Audit Office, she added.
The second reserve fund was used because the expo was based on a new city plan formulated after the annual operational budget was allocated, she said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator and Taipei mayoral candidate Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said that city expos should enhance residents’ sense of identity and pride, but Ko’s administration rushed the event, without comprehensive planning, and held it for the sake of hosting it, as if lighting a firework.
He urged Ko and Huang to respond to questions about moving money from the budgets of city departments for the expo.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
RSS