"Foreigner-friendly" taxies are in short supply in Taipei, Mayor Hau Lung-bin (
Hau said the Taipei City Government had for some time pushed for taxi drivers to be trained to offer convenient service to foreign visitors, but that the number of approved drivers stood at only 163.
He said he had instructed the city's Department of Transportation to consider inviting taxi drivers who provided contract services to international hotels to join the city's tourist-friendly fleet.
Hau said the city government must make the best of scarce resources to solve the problem.
He also asked for increased publicity of the service, particularly in places frequented by foreign visitors -- such as airports and MRT stations.
City transportation officials said they would continue to promote the taxi service and that Japanese-speaking taxi drivers would soon join their English-speaking counterparts in the special fleet.
Officials said that 44 taxi drivers recently passed a Japanese-proficiency test.
They said they were working with taxi companies to provide tourism-specific English courses. Further taxi drivers would be added to the fleet once they had passed an English-proficiency test, they said.
However, they said that too few taxi drivers were passing the test.
Officials said the city's international hotels had been presented with a list of approved tourist taxi drivers and that all capable taxi drivers were invited to publicize their linguistic skills.
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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