Crowds poured into branches of the wholesale chain store RT-Mart yesterday to purchase purple yams from a poor farmer who has a little girl expecting to enter kindergarten despite the family's lack of money.
After noticing the media's reports about the girl's situation, RT-Mart decided to buy all the purple yams the Nantou farmer had to sell to help relieve his family's debt.
RT-Mart Marketing Manager Wang Tong-fan (王彤芳) said, "RT-Mart is a wholesale channel with many customers. We can achieve the goal of helping this family only with the support of our customers."
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Last month Business Weekly ran a story featuring the Chen family's tribulations. The magazine reported that the farmer had had a poor harvest and, as a result, had fallen into debt.
The family tried their hand at growing purple yams because two years ago it was a profitable crop at NT$50 to NT$60 a catty. But too many farmers decided to grow taro because of the attractive prices. Last year, because of excessive yield, the price plunged to NT$10 a catty. The family could not sell their stock of purple yams.
The story of the Chen's misfortunes started began circulating on the Internet because of the Business Weekly article. It generated huge response from the Internet community, and soon RT-Mart picked up on the issue.
RT-Mart decided to purchase most of Chen's purple yams, and sell them at the wholesale price to raise money for CFhen's daughter's, Hsiao-ju, schooling. Hsiao-Ju would not have been able to attend kindergarten had the family been unable to sell its produce.
When RT-Mart announced its purple-yam campaign, it met with an unexpectedly enthusiastic reaction from the public.
Many consumers e-mailed RT-Mart to ask the price of the yams and a lot of people picked up at least one yam when they passed through the store's vegetable sections.
Meanwhile Chen has been declining donation offers. He believes he can support his family on his own. To help Chen, RT-Mart not only bought his purple yams, but has also taken him on as a produce provider. Chen has also been introduced to three contacts in central Taiwan so he can get in touch with more buyers to sell his crops.
"We decided to sell his produce because many of our customers are sympathetic to his plight. We help the customers help the farmers in need. It is wonderful that we have received so many positive responses for Chen's case," Wang said.
"We have been keen to help the agricultural industry in Taiwan, and we have been working closely with farmer's associations. We often help monitor and adjust the price of agricultural produce to the farmers' advantage," Wang said.
"RT-Mart is happy to help out with single cases, but at the same time, similar projects on a large scale need to planned by the government first so it is more efficient. The government has been offering many different relief and promotion plans, and we have been following these plans eagerly," Wang said.
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,