The extra budget and the amendment to the special budget totaling NT$116 billion (US$3.8 billion) combined with cross-strait weekend charter flights will help push economic growth to 4.8 percent, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) said yesterday.
The extra budget presented to the legislature for review included around NT$103 billion to help local governments complete infrastructure projects and expand domestic demand and another NT$12 billion to compensate public transportation firms and taxi drivers for increased fuel costs.
“Because of the poor economic environment and recent commodity price hikes, the government has to improve the situation with the extra budget plan to stimulate domestic construction and stabilize prices,” Liu said yesterday when presenting the budget report to the legislature.
The budget proposal was made after President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) vowed during his presidential campaign to revise the budget to facilitate campaign promises.
In response, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus attacked the Cabinet’s decision to allocate a total of NT$66.8 billion to each city and county according to its population and threatened to boycott the proposal.
DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-ching (葉宜津) condemned the proposal for slashing NT$6.5 billion of construction funds requested by Kaohsiung City, Kaohsiung County, Tainan County and Pingtung County.
The underground railway construction project in Taichung City, however, received an additional NT$1.5 billion under the proposal.
“It’s an unfair allocation. The budget should be allocated according to each local government’s financial situation, rather than its population,” Yeh said.
Liu denied being partial in allocating funds to local governments and said the Cabinet will consider their financial situations when preparing budgets in future.
DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) joined Yeh in lashing out at the Cabinet for punishing cities and counties governed by pan-green heads and said the DPP caucus will boycott the budget proposal.
DPP Legislator Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠) further cited a report issued by the legislature’s budget center and accused the Cabinet of failing to follow the Budget Law (預算法) regulations when listing its extra budget.
It threatened to send budget items that were listed illegally to the Control Yuan for examination after the Control Yuan is re-convened.
The budget center’s assessment of the extra budget, showed a total of NT$24.8 billion of the proposed extra funding was listed illegally.
The Budget Law states that any extra budget should be presented when the amount allocated for a certain budget item needs to be increased. Items such as subsidizing transportation, however, were new items, the center said.
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
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
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