The leadership of the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) legislative caucus will be up for grabs next week, as the caucus' current whip, Huang Teh-fu (
In a report released by a local news wire yesterday, Huang was quoted as saying elections for the party's new legislative caucus whip would take place next week this Thursday. First on the agenda for the new whip, Huang said in the report, would be educational and social benefit policies the party had earlier promised to support.
In early December, the KMT said that if the pan-blue camp retained a majority in the legislature after the Dec. 11 elections, it would promote nine specific social policies. In the news wire report, Huang said that the new KMT caucus whip would make it their top priority to consult the party's opposition ally, the People First Party (PFP), about the bills.
Confirming the report, KMT spokesman Chang Jung-kung (
The nine draft laws the KMT will push for are: a youth educational benefits statute, increasing the amount of money invested in education from 2 percent to 6 percent of the nation's GDP, a statute providing for equal treatment of both private and public school teachers' retirement, a health insurance statute that includes a retirement plan for farmers, reforms to the Social Service and Rescue Law (
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
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