The Control Yuan yesterday censured the Cabinet-level Council of Aboriginal Affairs for dereliction of duty in not providing proper assistance to the nation's Aborigines and making them suffer from the difficulties of unemployment.
"The council obviously wastes its resources by setting up job-service stations in cities and counties where relatively few Aboriginal people live," a report released by the Control Yuan stated yesterday.
"Also, its training programs provided to that group do not fit their needs and do not sufficiently lower the group's unemployment rate," it added.
The report was announced yesterday by Control Yuan members Lin Ju-liang (林鉅鋃), Lin Jiang-tsai (林將財), Lin Chiou-shan (林秋山) and Huang Wu-tzu (黃武次) who conducted the investigation into the matter.
The four highlighted the problem of high unemployment for Aboriginal groups in Taiwan and used that as the basis for the Control Yuan's censure of the council for its failure to resolve such problems.
According to the report, official statistics show that in May of this year, the Aboriginal unemployment rate reached 8.37 percent compared to 5.02 percent for non-Aboriginal groups.
This year's statistics also show that the nation's Aborigines who are currently looking for work have, on average, been jobless about 65 weeks. Among those Aborigine job hunters, 3 percent of them have been without work for more than 5 years.
The Control Yuan found that the Aboriginal council had set up job service stations for Aborigines in five urban areas including Taipei, Keelung, Taoyuan, Taichung and Kaohsiung.
But most Aborigines do not live in those cities -- they live in Hualien, Taitung and Pingtung Counties; and the highest unemployment rates for Aboriginals are in Keelung City (21.44 percent), Ilan County (20.27 percent) and Hsinchu County (21.44 percent).
"The administrative measures should be service-oriented, but the council obviously did not do it well and wasted the resources of the government," Huang said.
Furthermore, the new report pointed out that even though the council has provided job-training programs every year since 1999, the participation rate in such programs has been as low as 11 percent.
Also, even after obtaining certificates from such programs, only 5 percent of the participants are working in a field related to their studies.
"The council achieves little in terms of promoting job-training programs as well as introducing participants to proper positions," the report said.
The report concluded that the council should take at least partial responsibility for the fact that the unemployment rate among Aborigines remains high.
The council has two months to report to the Control Yuan with its proposed measures for improving its performance.
Alain Robert, known as the "French Spider-Man," praised Alex Honnold as exceptionally well-prepared after the US climber completed a free solo ascent of Taipei 101 yesterday. Robert said Honnold's ascent of the 508m-tall skyscraper in just more than one-and-a-half hours without using safety ropes or equipment was a remarkable achievement. "This is my life," he said in an interview conducted in French, adding that he liked the feeling of being "on the edge of danger." The 63-year-old Frenchman climbed Taipei 101 using ropes in December 2004, taking about four hours to reach the top. On a one-to-10 scale of difficulty, Robert said Taipei 101
A preclearance service to facilitate entry for people traveling to select airports in Japan would be available from Thursday next week to Feb. 25 at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, Taoyuan International Airport Corp (TIAC) said on Tuesday. The service was first made available to Taiwanese travelers throughout the winter vacation of 2024 and during the Lunar New Year holiday. In addition to flights to the Japanese cities of Hakodate, Asahikawa, Akita, Sendai, Niigata, Okayama, Takamatsu, Kumamoto and Kagoshima, the service would be available to travelers to Kobe and Oita. The service can be accessed by passengers of 15 flight routes operated by
Taiwanese and US defense groups are collaborating to introduce deployable, semi-autonomous manufacturing systems for drones and components in a boost to the nation’s supply chain resilience. Taiwan’s G-Tech Optroelectronics Corp subsidiary GTOC and the US’ Aerkomm Inc on Friday announced an agreement with fellow US-based Firestorm Lab to adopt the latter’s xCell, a technology featuring 3D printers fitted in 6.1m container units. The systems enable aerial platforms and parts to be produced in high volumes from dispersed nodes capable of rapid redeployment, to minimize the risk of enemy strikes and to meet field requirements, they said. Firestorm chief technology officer Ian Muceus said
MORE FALL: An investigation into one of Xi’s key cronies, part of a broader ‘anti-corruption’ drive, indicates that he might have a deep distrust in the military, an expert said China’s latest military purge underscores systemic risks in its shift from collective leadership to sole rule under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), and could disrupt its chain of command and military capabilities, a national security official said yesterday. If decisionmaking within the Chinese Communist Party has become “irrational” under one-man rule, the Taiwan Strait and the regional situation must be approached with extreme caution, given unforeseen risks, they added. The anonymous official made the remarks as China’s Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia (張又俠) and Joint Staff Department Chief of Staff Liu Zhenli (劉振立) were reportedly being investigated for suspected “serious
RSS