A 29-year-old woman yesterday asked the Taipei City Government to investigate her former employer, who allegedly fired her after she sued her dentist for sexual harassment because the dentist is a major client of the firm.
The woman, who declined to give her name, told a press conference that the company, which markets healthfood products, sacked her after she filed the lawsuit.
She said her dentist, Chiang Kuo-ming (江國銘), had told her that her tooth alignment could be the cause of pain she was having in her waist and suggested a body massage could help relieve the pain.
Chiang tricked her into agreeing to be filmed, she said.
She said she had fled the room after Chiang rubbed her breasts.
“The dentist denied any wrongdoing until prosecutors found the videos,” she said. “What has hurt the most, however, is that instead of supporting me, my company pressured me and asked me to quit because they didn’t want to lose a big client.”
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilors Chen Cheng-chung (陳政忠) and New Party collegue Huang Shan-shan (黃珊珊) also attended her press conference.
Huang said the company appeared to have violated the Gender Equality in Employment Act (兩性工作平等法) and the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) by firing the woman without just cause.
Huang demanded Taipei City’s Department of Labor Affairs launch an immediate investigation into the incident.
Chen called on the city’s Department of Health to investigate the dentist, who is still practicing in Taipei City and Taipei County after being released on NT$100,000 bail.
Wu Hai-yen (吳海燕), a division chief at the Department of Labor Affairs, said the company had broken the law and promised to help the woman negotiate with her former employer.
The company would be fined between NT$100,000 and NT$500,000 for violating labor regulations, Wu said.
Chen Ching-mei (陳青梅), deputy commissioner of the health department, said Chiang’s license could not be suspended or revoked because he had not violated the Doctors Act (醫師法).
However, Chen said he would discuss the case with health authorities in Taipei County so both of the dentist’s clinics could be monitored.
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