The government is scheduled to establish Taiwan Port Co by 2012, which would operate the nation’s major international seaports in a corporate management style, according to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications.
The ministry said the change was proposed in compliance with the national policy to reorganize the central government’s agencies, adding that it was also seen as a way to salvage the global ranking of the Port of Kaohsiung, the nation’s principal seaport, which had fallen out of the international top 10 in 2008.
Based on the preliminary plan from the ministry’s Department of Navigation and Aviation, all of the nation’s major international seaports will be the branches of Taiwan Port Co, including the Port of Kaohsiung, Port of Keelung, Port of Taichung and Hualien Port.
The plan will divide the operations of the seaports into two parts, the ministry said. The part that involves government authority will be handled by the ministry’s Port Bureau. Taiwan Port Co, on the other hand, will be in charge of managing the seaports, such as attracting investments from overseas. The plan will also aim to solve the issue of aging seaport employees by reorganizing seaport personnel, the ministry said.
Currently, the average age of seaport employees is 53. Of the 4,000 seaport employees, the ministry plans to transfer about 700 of them to the Port Bureau, while the rest will be working for the port company.
Regarding the assets and properties currently owned by harbor bureaus in the above-stated seaports, the Department of Navigation and Aviation said it is planning to recruit a consulting firm to examine some of the issues, including the proportion of assets that can be transferred to the port company. When asked whether the calculation methods for the volumes of cargo and containers handled, which are two important indicators of competitiveness, could be changed since all the seaports will be managed by the new entity, the department said issues of this kind would need further discussion.
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,