Taiwan had more than 64,000 volunteers last year, of whom 70 percent were women, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday.
Since the Volunteer Service Law (
At the end of last year, ministry officials said, there were 1,169 volunteer service corps, up 17.1 percent from a year before.
In terms of numbers, the service corps had a total of 64,822 volunteers, marking a 10.5 percent increase from the 2003 level.
On average, each volunteer worked 1.6 hours in two installments per week.
Female volunteers far outnumbered their male counterparts, 70 percent to 30 percent. In terms of education, graduates of senior high schools and vocational schools formed the bulk, accounting for 40 percent of the total.
By occupation, homemakers accounted for 30 percent of all formally registered volunteers, followed by those working in the commercial and industrial community with 24 percent and students at 16 percent.
By area, Kaohsiung County boasted the largest number of volunteers with more than 6,300, followed by Taichung City with 5,700 and Taipei City with 5,500.
However, Hualien County had the highest volunteer participation rate, with 88 volunteers out of every 10,000 residents. Nantou County came in second with 72 volunteers out of every 10,000 residents, followed by Penghu County with 61 volunteers per 10,000 residents.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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