The government yesterday announced schooling and aid measures for students affected by Typhoon Morakot to ensure their education was not interrupted.
Information provided by the Central Emergency Operation Center shows that because of damage wrought by the typhoon, 20 elementary and junior high schools will not be able to reopen in time for the start of the new school year next month.
Students from damaged schools will be allowed to attend classes in areas where their relatives live, in other counties or cities, or near their temporary shelters, without being subject to normal school district restrictions, Deputy Minister of Education Wu Tsai-shung (吳財順) said.
If none of these three options fit the students’ needs, the Ministry of Education (MOE) will open temporary classrooms at the various shelters, Wu said.
In addition, the MOE will provide a variety of subsidies for the affected students.
Elementary and junior high school students will each receive NT$1,500 to NT$1,600 per semester for up to three years in general subsidies and NT$1,500 per month in lunch subsidies, the MOE said.
Senior high school, college and university students will be able to postpone their enrollment and will be granted full tuition and miscellaneous fee waivers for up to three years.
While senior high school students will each receive NT$23,600 per semester in living cost subsidies for up to three years, college and university students will get have their dormitory fees waived for one year.
For all students, the relief allowance will range from NT$5,000 to NT$10,000 per month, while subsidies ranging from NT$10,000 to NT$60,000 will be provided on the death or injury of students or their parents, the MOE said.
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