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EDITORIAL: A myopic
view of the cold numbers
At newsstands nationwide yesterday, passersby would have been shocked by the
front-page headlines: A family of four in New Taipei City (新北市) committed
suicide over their debts and inability to pay their utility bills.
Some may wonder what has become of Taiwan, while many more worry about the
future of the country. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has yet to start his second
term and already this is what the country is coming to.
Some may be quick to defend Ma’s administration, dismissing the family’s suicide
as an isolated case and attributing the cause of the tragedy to the victims’ own
failure to make a living. However, this does not mean that the government is
fully innocent.
After all, isn’t it the responsibility of the government to look after the
welfare of its people? What is the point of having a government when it can’t
perform this duty, particularly for the underprivileged, as was the case for
this New Taipei City family? Instead, the government is spearheading price hikes
— a move that adds to the woes of people who are already struggling to make ends
meet.
Following the government’s announcement on April 1 of an increase of between 7
and 11 percent in domestic unleaded gasoline prices — the biggest one-time
increase in fuel prices since May 2008 — state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) is
also mulling hikes to household, commercial and industrial electricity rates in
the immediate future.
According to a proposal by Taipower yesterday, the government is planning a
nearly 26 percent percent price hike in household electricity fees.
The utility cites the accumulated losses of NT$117.9 billion (US$3.99 billion)
it incurred from 2006 to the end of last year as the reason it is increasing
electricity rates, and that if the price were not raised, pretax losses would
reach as high as NT$100 billion this year. It also said that despite the
increases, the nation’s fuel prices and electricity fees are still considered
the lowest in Asia.
It is regrettable that the Ma administration only sees — and seemingly cares
about — the numbers and not the impact of its utility price hikes on the public,
especially the underprivileged.
The increase in electricity prices will affect all sectors, from the increase in
every household and company’s monthly electricity bill to increased costs for
virtually all goods and spending, such as food items and daily commutes.
That is not to say the government should not increase electricity prices; the
point is whether the government has presented a reasonable explanation for its
new policy. Just like with state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan’s oft-criticized fuel
price increases, it appears that the government, rather than first thinking
about what is wrong with Taipower’s management, has instead set its sights
directly on people’s pockets to pay for the company’s losses.
Such is certainly not the act of a caring and responsible government.
A responsible government would not look just at the numbers, but would draw up
supplementary measures that could best counter the impact of its utility price
hikes on the public, especially the underprivileged. And a caring president
would think about how the price hikes would make the lives of the poor even more
difficult rather than openly criticizing his own people as Ma did in Burkina
Faso on Tuesday, saying he felt ashamed about Taiwanese’s wasteful use of
electricity.
So much for a president who is fond of lecturing government officials “to feel
the pain of the people.”
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