Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said yesterday that the city's Education Bureau and schools had overlooked the importance of resolving the problem of bullying on campus.
Chen said city government agencies should acknowledge the issue and study how to ensure campus security.
“I will put Deputy Mayor Lee [Yung-te (李永得)] in charge. I want to see updated reports and statistics every six months,” she said.
Chen was responding to concerns raised on the council floor by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) City Councilor Lin Kuo-cheng (林國正) about campus security.
Lin accused the city government of failing to take campus security seriously.
Lin cited the latest statistics from the National Police Agency (NPA) showing that the city's crime rate had reached 6.28 criminals per 100,000 people, while Taipei City only had a crime rate of 3.53 offenders per 100,000 people.
NPA data also showed that the number of teenagers on drugs in Kaohsiung was about 1.78 times that in Taipei City, Lin said.
Chen said many school bullies or teenage drug addicts in the city were from economically disadvantaged families or were dropouts, but the city government would never give up on them.
“The issue of campus security is a matter of conscience,” Chen said, adding that the city government would never evade the issue.
In other news, the city's Economic Development Bureau urged residents of Dapingding (大坪頂) to learn to live in harmony with the Caprimulgus affinis after residents complained about the noise made by the birds.
Bureau director-general Liu Hsin-cheng (劉馨正) said an increasing number of the rare birds, commonly known as the Savanna Nightjar, had migrated to urban areas in recent years.
Many Siaogang District (小港) residents had complained about having difficulty sleeping because of the constant chirping made by the birds during the mating season, Liu said.
Saying that the mating season would last through August, Liu urged residents to strike a balance between their lives and protection of the birds.
Taiwanese scientists have engineered plants that can capture about 50 percent more carbon dioxide and produce more than twice as many seeds as unmodified plants, a breakthrough they hope could one day help mitigate global warming and grow more food staples such as rice. If applied to major food crops, the new system could cut carbon emissions and raise yields “without additional equipment or labor costs,” Academia Sinica researcher and lead author the study Lu Kuan-jen (呂冠箴) said. Academia Sinica president James Liao (廖俊智) said that as humans emit 9.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide compared with the 220 billion tonnes absorbed
The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Wanda-Zhonghe Line is 81.7 percent complete, with public opening targeted for the end of 2027, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said today. Surrounding roads are to be open to the public by the end of next year, Hou said during an inspection of construction progress. The 9.5km line, featuring nine underground stations and one depot, is expected to connect Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station to Chukuang Station in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和). All 18 tunnels for the line are complete, while the main structures of the stations and depot are mostly finished, he
Taipei is to implement widespread road closures around Taipei 101 on Friday to make way for large crowds during the Double Ten National Day celebration, the Taipei Department of Transportation said. A four-minute fireworks display is to be launched from the skyscraper, along with a performance by 500 drones flying in formation above the nearby Nanshan A21 site, starting at 10pm. Vehicle restrictions would occur in phases, they said. From 5pm to 9pm, inner lanes of Songshou Road between Taipei City Hall and Taipei 101 are to be closed, with only the outer lanes remaining open. Between 9pm and 9:40pm, the section is
China’s plan to deploy a new hypersonic ballistic missile at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) base near Taiwan likely targets US airbases and ships in the western Pacific, but it would also present new threats to Taiwan, defense experts said. The New York Times — citing a US Department of Defense report from last year on China’s military power — on Monday reported in an article titled “The missiles threatening Taiwan” that China has stockpiled 3,500 missiles, 1.5 times more than four years earlier. Although it is unclear how many of those missiles were targeting Taiwan, the newspaper reported
RSS