Taipei authorities today are to begin enforcing new littering fines for smokers who drop their cigarette butts on the ground.
Previously, offenders faced a fine of only NT$1,200, regardless of their record. As of today, a second-time offender will be subject to a triple fine of NT$3,600, with NT$5,000 levied for any offense thereafter.
The fine hikes follow controversy early last month over cigarette butt litter in residential areas in Xinren borough (新仁) near the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park (松山文創園區), which bans smoking.
Warning: Smoking can damage your health.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
Taipei Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Liou Ming-lone (劉銘龍) said at the time that his department was already working on new measures to target such littering.
The department said cigarette butt littering accounts for more than half the fines it levies. It issued 17,452 fines for cigarette butt littering last year, of which 526 were to given to repeat offenders, department figures show.
Liou yesterday brushed aside questions about whether he had enough staff to enforce the new fine policy, saying that department personnel could request police assistance if litterbugs refuse to cooperate.
Chiu Kuan-hou (邱寬厚), head of the department section dealing with the issue, said the department had 110 employees responsible for enforcing anti-litter regulations.
While some people deny littering when confronted, department agents often use covertly taken pictures as evidence, Chiu said, citing the example of a male litterer who was fined even after swallowing the cigarette butt he had dropped.
Enforcement agents who discover foreigners littering are to accompany them to a nearby convenience store or post office so the litterbug can pay the fine directly, Chiu said.
Department figures show that 120 foreigners were fined last year for cigarette butt litter.
The city is also working to increase the number of ashtray receptacles across the city, Chiu said.
Businesses have agreed to install ashtray receptacles in 270 of the 955 cigarette litter “hot spots” identified by city authorities, while ashtrays will be installed on all of the city’s 2,041 public trash cans by the end of this month.
The department plans to require ashtrays to be installed outside of buildings as part of building codes, Liou said.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has