Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) and Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) joined forces yesterday to petition Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) in the hope of stopping the central government from allowing Taipei County to take a share of their annual budget.
The legislature passed in May an amendment allowing Taipei County to be elevated to the status of a special municipality directly under the jurisdiction of the Cabinet, as a result of which the Taipei County Government would be entitled to a share of the budget allotted to the Taipei and Kaohsiung city governments.
The Ministry of Finance estimated that this would result in a NT$18.3 billion (US$555 million) annual shortfall for the Taipei City Government and NT$10 billion for Kaohsiung.
Hau and Chen expressed their concerns directly to the premier at yesterday's weekly Cabinet meeting. They said the elevation of Taipei County was the central government's responsibility.
The central government, they said, should therefore take care of the additional financial needs of the Taipei County Government, instead of asking Taipei City and Kaohsiung City to share their funds with their "new friend."
"If NT$18.3 billion is taken from our budget, it would mean that 15 percent of our annual budget would have disappeared. This is unfair to the residents of Taipei," Hau said.
Chen said she welcomed Taipei County's promotion but was unhappy with the manner in which the central government has dealt with the matter.
"It is the central government's policy to ensure that the development of Taipei City and Kaohsiung City is balanced. Now that our budget must be shared, I am afraid that this will never be accomplished," Chen said.
The premier said he understood Hau's and Chen's concerns and would look into the matter.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching