The government should ask local companies to earmark funds for suicide prevention to help employees, encourage the establishment of strong trade unions and combat an increase in suicide in the workforce, an expert said on Saturday.
“Big companies should be asked to appropriate a certain percentage of funds from their revenues to help their workers,” said Andrew Cheng (鄭泰安), a research fellow at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at Academia Sinica.
Cheng also called for the formation of strong trade unions so workers suffering from depression or other illnesses that might lead to suicide would not need to worry about being fired if they inform companies of their problems.
In Taiwan, however, most employers are small and medium-sized enterprises, which makes it difficult for workers to form trade unions — under law, a union cannot be formed unless there is a minimum of 30 workers at a company.
Cheng said that workers in this situation should join a big trade union in their industry if possible or seek assistance from the Council of Labor Affairs.
Suicide is one of the top 10 causes of death in Taiwan, according to the Department of Health.
Taiwan Labor Front secretary-general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said at the same event that the work environment is deteriorating because the basic wage level for young people has been falling.
“This will put more pressure on young people, as they do not get a fair salary for the work they do, while at the same time they face long work hours and a heavy workload,” he said.
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,