A report released yesterday by the Commission of Audit (CA) highlights the “exaggerated” progress of the Social Welfare Bureau’s (IAS) two inter-departmental teams’ visually impaired facility projects a number of years ago, where some projects still in progress were presented by the teams as having been completed, resulting in a lack of tactile guide path connections to major public places and even posing a danger to visually impaired users.
The two public entities slammed by the audit report, which was released yesterday, are the interdepartmental study team and the interdepartmental steering team for the bureau’s Ten Year Plan for Rehabilitation Services 2016-2025.
The government developed the Ten Year Plan for Rehabilitation Services 2016-2025 in 2016, and the report yesterday focused on the work from December 2013 to June 2023 in promoting barrier-free walking facilities for the visually impaired.
The audit report points out that the teams failed to be results-orientated and to effectively coordinate the work of various departments when formulating the plan, and the descriptions of the 34 short-term, medium-term and long-term programmes concerned were too brief and lacked specific sectoral divisions and work content, making it difficult to determine the actual number of projects.
In addition, the completion time and exact task as well as the workload were not clearly specified by the teams, the report pointed out.
The audit report also pointed out that in the teams’ 2019 and 2020 annual reports, unfinished programmes were reported as “implemented and completed”, while the public entities’ self-assessment of their work progress was not effectively verified, resulting in inaccurate reporting information.
The audit report points out that a barrier-free environment for the visually impaired is a basic configuration promised by the government for many years. However, the report reveals that even though interdepartmental teams have been set up and a coordination mechanism has been established, various public entities were still “unable to carry out their work at the same pace”.
The audit report recommends that the interdepartmental teams should clarify which team takes the lead in the work, so as to avoid affecting the effectiveness of the government entity concerned due to the lack of communication and coordination, and that the various participating entities should have the same goals to ensure the rational use of public funds, and most importantly, to ensure that the barrier-free facilities constructed by the government can perform their intended functions.
This photo combo and map provided by the Commission of Audit (CA) yesterday shows some projects with a lack of tactile guide path connections to major public places.
