Eight employees of a track and power maintenance unit on Taiwan High Speed Rail's Yunlin section recorded night inspections they did not carry out, a legislative committee heard on Wednesday. The company says an internal audit found the discrepancy in August and an investigation continues; a network-wide review found no similar cases elsewhere.
According to the Central News Agency and the Taipei Times, Kuomintang legislator Wang Hung-wei raised the case at the Legislative Yuan's transportation committee on Wednesday. Wang said she received a tip that the falsification lasted five years, and THSRC president Chen Hui-yu confirmed that the problem existed. The eight workers are reported to have resigned within the past month.
광고 문의 · 300×250The records at issue are the night track patrols handled by the maintenance unit responsible for the Yunlin section. As reported, staff logged patrols as done when they had not been. The meeting did not say exactly when the falsification began or how many inspections were missed over what period.
How it was found and what the company says
Chen said supervisors at the time were lax in overseeing the night patrols because they assumed monthly inspections by dedicated crews using maintenance vehicles were more thorough. This is the company's account; whether that was in fact the supervisors' reasoning has not been independently verified.
THSRC said an internal audit in August found that GPS data from vehicles assigned to the Yunlin office did not match the inspection reports, which triggered the probe. The employees admitted fabricating the records and resigned before it was completed. The company said safety violations will not be tolerated, will discipline supervisors under its rules and has widened the inquiry to higher-level managers.
Prevention and oversight
The Taipei Times reported that THSRC audited the whole network and its subsystems without finding further problems, held seven rounds of safety and legal training and added verification steps for tasks reported as complete. Deputy Transport Minister Chen Yen-po indicated the Railway Bureau is watching the matter and will step up oversight of THSRC.
Wang asked the company to verify the whistleblower's account and set out measures to prevent similar forgery elsewhere. Whether the falsified logs affected actual train safety, or whether anything was found wrong on the uninspected stretches, does not appear in the reports we reviewed. That has not been confirmed.