The National Freeway Bureau announced on Saturday that it will send a notice on July 1 to Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection Co (遠通電收) for failing to meet the terms of the agreement stated in its build-operate-transfer contract.
Far Eastern promised in the contract that it would raise the average usage rates of On-Board Units (OBU) at the nation’s toll booths, while the contract also listed specific goals to be achieved at different phases of the contract.
MISSED GOAL
The company has managed to meet the goals set for the first and second phases. However, the third phase goal is to elevate the average usage rate of OBUs to 45 percent by the end of this month. The company has advised the bureau that it cannot meet the stated goal, saying it has so far achieved an average usage rate of only 38 percent.
The bureau’s deputy chief engineer Wu Mu-fu (吳木富) said the notice to be sent on July 1 would advise the company that it has not met the stated goal and ask it to propose a solution to address the situation.
PENALTIES
“If the situation has failed to improve, we could either penalize Far Eastern NT$500,000 per day for failing to meet its target or terminate the contract,” Wu said.
Wu said the bureau would evaluate Far Eastern’s proposed solution and determine a reasonable amount of time for it to be implemented, adding that the solution must not compromise the government’s policy of charging motorists based on the number of kilometers they travel on the nation’s freeways by the end of 2012.
REJECTED PROPOSAL
Earlier this year, Far Eastern proposed that the government should give OBU users discounted toll fees as a way to help raise the average usage rate. That proposal, however, was rejected by the bureau.
Instead, the bureau said Far Eastern should either consider reducing its OBU charges or simply offer free OBUs to motorists.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS