Members of the Taiwan Railway Union (TRU) yesterday asked the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) to rescind the nominations of three Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) employees for the soon-to-be-established board of Taiwan Railways Corp and allow workers to elect members to the board, after two of the nominees were found to have committed criminal offenses.
“We are asking MOTC to rescind the nominations. It should submit a new list after workers hold a democratic election to elect people who will represent them at board meetings,” the union said.
“We heard that the transportation ministry is having its first board meeting on July 31, which leaves them with plenty of time to hold an election,” it said.
Photo: CNA
The TRA is to be incorporated in to Taiwan Railways Corp in January next year. The Administrative Act of State-Owned Enterprises (國營事業管理法) stipulates that at least one-fifth of the directors, who are to serve as trustees of a state-run enterprise who represent state capital, must be recommended by the institution’s labor union.
The TRA employees who would represent workers at board meetings — Wu Chang-chi (吳長智), Lin Yu-che (林佑哲) and Huo Shan-ping (霍善屏) — were nominated by the Taiwan Railway Labor Union (TRLU), the largest union at the railway company.
However, Wu was sentenced to two months in jail for sexually harassing a TRA employee and indecency, while Lin received a major demerit from the TRA for illegally setting up a Web site to sell railway tickets, the TRU said.
Wang on Monday said he was assessing the situation.
The TRU the same day issued a statement saying that Wang’s announcement showed that neither the TRA nor the MOTC had a full grasp of the situation.
“Please do not make us walk the last mile to a corporatized railway agency with criminals,” the TRU said.
According to regulations, board directors nominated by workers’ unions must be nominated in accordance with the unions’ democratic procedures, it said.
“The three board directors representing the workers are temporarily appointed to prepare for the establishment of the company and have not been elected through democratic procedures, so they are not official directors yet,” Wang said.
“Hopefully, the labor union will elect labor directors who meet the expectations of employees and the public in accordance,” he said.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its