The Kaohsiung City Government plans to merge its Information Office and Military Service Office with other city government agencies to help its fiscal budget clear the city council as soon as possible, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said yesterday.
Chen said during question-and-answer sessions with Kaohsiung City councilors that she had made the “painful” decision to show the city government’s respect for the council.
The city council on Oct. 22 rejected the city government’s budget request because the it had submitted separate budgets for the two offices for the next fiscal year instead of following a resolution reached by the council last year to have the offices dissolved or merged with other city agencies by next June.
The city government had submitted a NT$80 billion (US$2.46 billion) budget, in which a total of NT$300 million was earmarked for the two offices.
In response, Chen convened a provisional administrative meeting on Wednesday at which a draft proposal was approved to merge the Information Office with the Tourism Bureau and to merge the Military Service Office with the Civil Affairs Bureau.
The mergers would take effect on July 1 if the council passes the draft proposal.
Chen yesterday praised the two offices’ performance, saying that the military office had served retired military personnel and their families very well, while the information office had done a good job in promoting the city.
“The council’s request to have the two offices dissolved or merged with other agencies is beyond the comprehension of everyone in the nation,” Chen said.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Councilor Lee Chiao-ju (李喬如) said he wondered whether the council’s move resulted from the city government’s decision to screen a documentary about exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer in September.
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:
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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