Authorities warned residents to remain at home yesterday after heavy rains began falling again across Mumbai and the surrounding state, which were hammered last week by devastating floods.
Cleanup efforts and the distribution of food supplies to needy residents were badly slowed by the renewed monsoon rains, which began early yesterday morning, and aviation officials ordered the city's airports, the busiest in the country, closed because of poor visibility. The airports reopened at around noon after a seven-hour shutdown.
Officials, meanwhile, said the death toll from the recent rains could reach 1,000.
The recovery over the weekend of more than 100 bodies pushed the official death toll to 899. Yesterday, officials said more bodies were likely to be recovered from the flood-devastated Raigad district.
"The bodies are still coming out. There will be another 100 or so," said K. Vatsa, state rehabilitation secretary. "The toll will definitely be around 1,000."
With renewed rains pounding the city, the Mumbai police issued an alert cautioning people to stay home because of rising water levels.
"We're asking people to travel only if essential," said Mumbai's police chief A.N. Roy.
Five days after crippling rains pounded western India -- reaching a record 94cm in suburban Mumbai -- soldiers, civil defense teams and aid workers continued to find bodies from the state's worst-affected districts: Raigad, Ratnagiri, Thane, Parbhani, Nanded and Kolhapur.
But incessant rainfall and mounds of debris, boulders and mud tangled into the wooden and tin remains of people's homes were making it a challenge to pull out the remaining bodies.
"The rains are making retrieval difficult," Vatsa said.
Nearly 200 medical teams from Mumbai have set out for more than 300 villages across the state. Civic authorities have deployed health workers in the Mumbai suburbs to distribute medicines and disinfectants to guard against the spread of waterborne diseases.
As many as 418 people were killed in Mumbai -- most of them drowned, buried by landslides or electrocuted.
Government and relief officials say there is little likelihood of finding more survivors.
Yesterday, electricity was gradually restored to many northern Mumbai neighborhoods a day after angry demonstrators blocked traffic demanding restoration of clean drinking water, power and the cleanup of garbage and decomposing animal carcasses.
Residents in five Mumbai neighborhoods shouted anti-government slogans and demanded an immediate cleanup. Some shielded themselves from the rain with plastic sheets, while others simply got drenched as they demonstrated outside civic offices.
"For so many days we have been lifting the bodies of the dead and now we are clearing animals from the roads. Is this our work?" asked a furious Hafeez Irani, his face covered with a handkerchief against the stench.
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS