The Executive Yuan recently passed a draft of the "Whistleblower Protection Act" to encourage people to blow the whistle on unscrupulous public sector or business practices. The legislature's Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee examined the draft bill on May 23. Several legislators criticized the draft bill for not protecting cooperative education participants, interns, and dispatch workers.
Recently, a manufacturer was found to be repackaging rotten eggs and selling them. Less than a week later, it was reported for selling expired egg products. These cases only came to light because of whistleblowers. The first whistleblower not only lost the job, but was also threatened and has been unable to find a new job. The Executive Yuan recently passed a draft of the "Whistleblower Protection Act" to keep the identities of whistleblowers confidential and protect their working rights. Several legislators criticized the draft bill for not doing enough to protect whistleblowers against retaliation from companies. The draft bill only allows for fines of NT$50,000 to NT$5 million, which some companies are more than willing to pay to dispose of the matter.
Blowing the whistle may put the lives of whistleblowers at risk, or they may risk not ever being promoted again. However, leaking the identity of whistleblowers is only punishable by a fine of several tens of thousands of NT dollars.
(The draft bill) omits cooperative education participants, interns, and dispatch workers, who could all be whistleblowers.
Several lawmakers proposed a public welfare whistleblower protection draft bill that emphasizes public welfare and includes protection for dispatch workers, interns, and cooperative education participants who blow the whistle. They said they don't encourage everyone to become whistleblowers, because trust between people is the foundation of a stable society. Other legislators asked why the Executive Yuan's draft bill does not protect those wishing to blow the whistle on the media. They therefore proposed incorporating media whistleblowers into the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act and the Referendum Act to prevent external influences from "manipulating information."
But the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act and the Referendum Act do not protect media whistleblowers, so what can we do about this, Mr. Minister? We did do this when discussing this draft bill, we did raise it and everyone discussed it.
The Ministry of Justice says previous discussions centered on the fear of whistleblowing being used to manipulate elections. Now, there is so much fake news and the situation has changed, so it wants to discuss this issue again.