Corrupt Legislators and TRA with Multiple Ills

 Corrupt Legislators and TRA with Multiple Ills

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

October 31, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

A contradictory, intriguing, and even horrifying phenomenon: the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) has just broken out a huge disaster caused by systemic factors; CPC Taiwan repeatedly broke out environmental hazards and consumer losses caused by systemic malaise and disorderly management. At this time, legislators, however, introduced a bill to amend existing legislation, demanding to absorb more industries into the management of state-owned enterprises; the corruption and expansion of power by legislators are transparent at a glance. If the government under the ruling party still harbors the ideals of "democracy and progress," and shows responsibility for the people and future generations, then it should, in a stern voice, say "no!" to the legislators that are corrupt without end.

The Puyuma accident caused serious loss of life and injuries; the outside world do not believe it was the responsibility of a single locomotive engineer, but the multiple malaise of the fossilization of the organization, long-term financial losses, operational procedures becoming pro forma, and improper personnel training and management. In addition, the TRA and other state-owned enterprises have more complicated organizational and cultural problems that need to be clarified. However, we are witnessing DPP legislators Chen Ming-wen, Wang Ding-yu et al. introducing a bill proposing to revise the "State-run Enterprise Management Act," changing the existing provisions defining state-owned enterprises as those enterprises with government capital exceeding 50% into over 20%; furthermore, enterprises with reinvestments or further reinvestments by the government, non-profit organizations and state-owned enterprises exceeding 50% of capitalization would also be defined as state-owned enterprises. In other words, direct investments and indirect investments would all be counted as shares owned by the government.

The organizational culture of state-owned enterprises is conservative; with regard to decisions on the recruitment, promotion, and pay scale of personnel, up to corporate strategy and market sensitiveness, they are all inferior to those of private enterprises. This being a global consensus, 20 years ago, Taiwan experienced a big wave of large-scale privatization. Viewed from a global perspective, in the economic structure of advanced countries, the ratio of state-owned enterprises is extremely low.

As a free economy, Taiwan should fully implement the policy of privatization, only keeping a few extremely sensitive public utilities as state-owned. With regard to lowering the bar, turning more corporations into the management of state-owned enterprises, it is destined to be a 100% disaster.

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