Eight THSR workers falsified maintenance records for five years

By Olivia Hart

Eight Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) workers falsified electric-system maintenance records for five years before an internal audit found that vehicle GPS data in Yunlin County did not match inspection reports in the work logs, THSR president Bob Chen and lawmakers said.

KMT legislator Wang Hung-wei told a legislative meeting that the eight workers were assigned to nighttime inspections in a THSR maintenance unit responsible for Yunlin County. Citing a tip to her office, Wang said the personnel had resigned.

She asked the high-speed rail operator to confirm the whistleblower’s account and set out the steps taken to prevent similar record forgery in other parts of the railway. Wang also asked how THSR would verify inspection work outside Yunlin.

THSR president Bob Chen confirmed the incident. He said a local supervisor had neglected their duties after allegedly believing that “the monthly inspection by dedicated maintenance crews made the nightly rounds redundant.” The claim concerned the division between local nighttime checks and dedicated monthly crews; Chen did not identify an authorized change to the railway’s underlying inspection schedule.

What did the investigation establish?

THSR officials told lawmakers that an internal audit in August found inconsistencies in the maintenance and inspection records of certain personnel in Yunlin, triggering an investigation.

Auditors compared GPS records from vehicles assigned to the Yunlin office with inspection reports in the work logs, and the records did not match. After questioning, the employees admitted fabricating the entries and resigned before the probe ended.

The company extended the inquiry to higher-level managers and issued sanctions where necessary, officials said. Chen said THSR then audited the rail network and its subsystems and found no additional problems. That remains an operator claim: the report provides no fleet deployment plan, comparative network data or independent validation against which to check the wider conclusion.

What changed after the falsified logs?

THSR has conducted seven rounds of safety and legal-standard training to improve staff professionalism and ethical standards, officials said. The operator also revised maintenance-inspection procedures to add verification mechanisms for tasks reported as completed. The changes target the omissions described: a supervisor’s redundancy judgment and logs that did not reconcile with vehicle movements.

THSR said the new process will establish evidence for reported task completion. The source does not specify how the verification operates or quantify the cost of the training, expanded audit or revised procedures. No staffing or equipment addition has been disclosed. These are completed organizational measures, but their preventive effect has not been measured.

The report describes no change to a published train service. THSR has disclosed neither a capacity adjustment nor a cost saving associated with the resignations, sanctions, training or new controls. The immediate operational burden instead sits with supervisors and maintenance crews that must document and verify more of their work.

Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Yen-po said the Railway Bureau monitored the incident and “respected the THSR’s handling of the matter.” His statement records regulatory oversight; the source announces no separate regulatory penalty, operating restriction or fleet directive.

What does this change for passengers and THSR?

On the information released, the change is procedural rather than a disclosed service change: no timetable, capacity, fare or route alteration has been announced. For THSR, the immediate consequences are eight resignations, sanctions, a review of higher-level managers and tighter verification of maintenance entries.

For passengers, the practical effect is additional checks rather than a quantified improvement in service or safety performance. The unresolved issue is whether the Yunlin fraud was isolated, because the company’s audit result and revised controls have not yet produced published recurrence or compliance data.

The next test is whether Yunlin’s replacement logs consistently match GPS records across other maintenance units and whether the expanded audit produces further findings. Until that evidence is available, recurrence and any systemwide safety effect remain unmeasured.