The Ministry of the Interior (MOI) is in talks with airlines and travel agencies to set up an online declaration system for travelers who are going to China.
"By law, every Taiwanese individual who plans to travel to China has to report their basic travel information to the Bureau of Immigration. However, in order to make it easy for travelers, we are hoping that airlines and travel agencies may help their customers do so through a computerized system that is hooked up with the bureau," Vice Minister of the Interior Lin Yung-chien (
Article 9 of the Act Governing Relations Between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (
Lin said that this article was revised in October 2003. Originally, it stipulated that travelers should declare their travel information directly to the authorities.
"However, some lawmakers wanted to make the process more expedient for travelers; therefore, the article was revised," Lin said.
Since the revision, negotiations have been taking place among the bureau, travel agencies and airlines to find a convenient way to implement the law.
Travel agencies and airlines have expressed reservations toward the policy, however, citing the costs of installing a computer system and accountability issues, among others.
According to information released by the bureau, an online declaration system was finished on Feb. 1 and has been tested by several travel agencies.
Once the online declaration system becomes official, travel agencies or airlines that fail to abide by the regulation may face a fine of NT$10,000.
They will not, however, be held responsible for travelers who fail to declare their travel information that have entered China from other countries.
"This law seeks to protect Taiwanese travelers in case of emergencies during their visits to China," Lin said.
According to Lin, China claims that its official statistics show that around 3.5 million Taiwanese people enter China per year. However, the bureau's travel declarations indicate that approximately 500,000 Taiwanese travel to China per year.
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,