Around 1,500 visually impaired masseurs from all over the nation took to the streets yesterday, protesting a Council of Grand Justice decision overturning a rule that made them the only legal masseurs.
“Massage is one of the few jobs that a visually impaired person can do well. But in recent years, their jobs have been threatened because of the growing number of illegal massage centers that employ masseurs with no visual impairment,” Sun Yi-hsin (孫一信), a long-time activist for the rights of the physically challenged, told the demonstrators at Liberty Square in Taipei before they began their march to the Ministry of the Interior.
Figures released by the National Federation of Masseurs’ Unions showed that more than 5,000 visually impaired people — representing 70 percent of all visually impaired people on the job market — are currently working in the massage industry.
PHOTO: CNA
“Instead of lending a helping hand to the visually impaired masseurs, the government is making the situation worse by planning to allow non-visually impaired masseurs into the market,” Sun said.
An article in the Rights and Interests of the Handicapped Protection Law (身心障礙者權益保障法) stipulates that “non-visually impaired persons may not work as masseurs.”
However, a constitutional interpretation issued by the Council of Grand Justices last month declared the clause unconstitutional as it violates equal rights in employment as protected by the Constitution. The Council then urged that the article be removed within three years.
That decision has worried the visually impaired masseurs.
Lee Cheng-chia (李政家), a 54-year-old visually impaired masseur, joined the march out of fear of more competition in the marketplace.
“I’m the only wage-earner in my family — my wife has just been laid off from a factory, two of my sons have just graduated from college and are looking for jobs, while my youngest son is still serving in the military,” Lee said.
He recalled that he used to be able to make between NT$50,000 and NT$60,000 a month as a masseur.
But since the illegal massage centers grew in number about five or six years ago, “I’m making less than NT$20,000 a month now.”
Once the legal barrier is lifted for the non-visually impaired to enter the industry, “things will only get worse,” Lee said.
Some of the visually impaired masseurs have tried other jobs, but failed.
“I majored in social works at National Taipei University of Education and I am a certified social worker,” said Chang Tung-fa (張東發), who suffers from a detached retina and is partially blind.
Chang had worked as a social worker at a charity organization for years, but problems with reading made him decide to quit.
“I can only read words at font size 70 on a computer screen. And when it comes to reading printed documents, I had to ask for help from my colleagues,” he said.
Prior to getting a college degree, Chang had also worked at his father’s auto repair shop, “but I cut my little finger once when operating a machine, because I couldn’t see clearly.”
“My eyesight is getting worse as I grow older, so I decided that I’d find a more stable, workable job, and thus I became a masseur,” he said.
After receiving representatives of the protesters, Deputy Minister of the Interior Lin Join-sane (林中森) said the ministry would set up a special task force within a week to come up with solutions to help the visually impaired masseurs.
Meanwhile, lawmakers across party lines, including Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Shyu Jong-shyoung (徐中雄) and Democratic Progressive Party legislators Chen Chieh-ju (陳節如) and Yu Jan-daw (余政道), also promised to ask the Council of Grand Justices to take another look at the interpretation.
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
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,
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