Questioning at the Taipei City Council has revealed that the city government is using a ranking contest to push its various departments and bureaus to purchase products from sheltered workshops. While this benefits workers with physical and mental disabilities, the approach itself has come under scrutiny.

• The Taipei City Department of Labor has long run a "Sheltered Workshop Product Procurement Contest," tallying each department's purchase totals every month and then publishing rankings and presenting awards.
• City Councillor Lin Liang-chun criticised the practice, saying that using the pressure of a leaderboard to force departments to buy amounts to a form of emotional blackmail for the officials who head them.
• The money involved is not an extra charity budget but rather the funds already earmarked for lunchboxes, printing and cleaning, simply redirected to sheltered workshops as a matter of priority.
• The backdrop is the blue-white camp's move to cut and freeze the entire Presidential Office state affairs fund, which has directly affected sheltered workshops' Mid-Autumn Festival gift box orders.
• Both the Department of Labor and the Department of Social Welfare have stated that cutting operating expenses would only bring procurement of sheltered workshop goods to a halt, and that the ones harmed would be workers with disabilities.

Outlook: The Taipei City Government has pledged to continue allocating funds and to give priority to purchasing sheltered workshop goods, but the budget battle at the central government level is likely to keep such orders under pressure.