China's remarks on direct charter flights received mixed reviews from lawmakers yesterday.
KMT Legislator John Chang (章孝嚴) painted the Chinese response as positive and urged the government to seize the opportunity to lift the ban on direct air links.
But DPP legislative whip Wang Tuoh (
Chang, who has floated the idea of direct charter flights to facilitate the return of Taiwanese business people in China for the Lunar New Year holiday, said he would go to China with domestic air companies next month to negotiate the matter.
He said point-to-point cross-strait charter flight services would be the best way to help Taiwanese businesspeople return to Taiwan before the opening of direct links.
Chang, a member of the KMT Central Standing Committee, made the remarks when he gave a report on his proposal at a regular meeting of the KMT Central Standing Committee.
Chang said he is glad that the Cabinet has directed the Mainland Affairs Council to complete its assessment in two weeks, allowing potential passengers ample time to make preparations.
"So long as all technical questions are settled by early December, China-based Taiwanese businesspeople may fly home nonstop for the Lunar New Year next February," he said.
Chang has initiated a petition calling for point-to-point, one-way charter flights.
He said 130 colleagues from across the political spectrum have signed the petition.
Though receptive to Chang's idea, the DPP doubts China would set aside political disputes in an attempt to promote direct transport links.
Wang noted there is no bona-fide civilian agency in China, which means the talks on direct charters would inevitably involve government officials.
Also, he said the principle of reciprocity suggested by Beijing has made Chang's one-way charters infeasible.
In related news, DPP Legislator Chang Ching-fang (張清芳) urged the government to make it easier for Chinese businessmen to stay in Taiwan in order to increase their willingness to invest in the local real-estate market.
He remarked that only one application has been filed since the government opened the market to Chinese people in August.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,