Kinmen County officials said the county government has been moving to eliminate the “ghost” population from its household registration lists to ensure that local elections are fair and to prevent its generous welfare benefits from going to non-residents.
The hunt for the “ghosts” — individuals registered as Kinmen residents without being born there or even having ever ived there — began in May and will continue until Oct. 15.
County household registration offices are checking registrations to ensure that a legitimate list of eligible voters is ready for the year-end “three-in-one” elections for county chief, county councilors and township administrators, the officials said.
A preliminary survey showed there were around 5,000 “ghosts” in the county, which has been a key transport hub between Taiwan and China since 2001.
However, a subsequent investigation of the 5,000 names of people has shown that the “ghosts” are elusive.
The county’s Bureau of Civil Affairs said registration offices had reviewed 470 household addresses and 951 people as of Sept. 15.
Only five were found to have illegally registered their household in Kinmen.
MYSTERIOUS GROWTH
The county’s population was 91,261 as of last month, 7,764 more than a year ago.
The population has grown at an unusually high pace in recent years, which some have attributed to the county’s generous welfare policies — which Kinmen boasts are the best in the country.
PERKS
Among them, education and student lunches are free through junior high school, public transportation on buses or boats is also free, and senior citizens get a monthly stipend of at least NT$3,000 per month.
Furthermore, Kinmen residents get special discounts on the county’s popular liquor kaoliang — a kind of strong liquor made of fermented sorghum — during Chinese New Year, Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Residents can resell the discounted bottles at a profit of between NT$2,000 and NT$3,000 per festival.
This year, residents also received NT$3,600 in kaoliang vouchers on three different occasions to buy Kinmen Kaoliang Corp products at local outlets. Those products can also be resold at a hefty profit.
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
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
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,