Stung by a string of mishaps at Taiwan’s main international airport, authorities there hope to bring back former airport workers to help give the facility a new lease of life, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said yesterday.
CAA officials acknowledged, however, that it would not be an easy task to persuade them to return to work at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport because many took preferential early retirement packages.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) ordered the CAA rehire some of its best-performing former workers — many of whom are still under 55 years of age and have good engineering and management expertise — to help the airport cope with its current woes as it moves toward privatization, CAA officials said.
Taiwan’s largest airport is scheduled to be privatized in November and many airport workers have applied for early retirement as concerns grow over future job prospects at the airport and the potential loss of some benefits under the new regime.
To identify the root cause of the airport’s many problems, issues which include leaky restroom plumbing, poor facilities, expensive food and staff misconduct, the MOTC has been holding meetings almost every day with officials from supervisory agencies.
Meanwhile, airport authorities are planning to recruit about 50 new staffers, mostly engineers, next month.
The Taoyuan Airport Improvement Task Force, set up last month by the MOTC, has described the three-decades old airport as being “very ill,” and has vowed to raise its world ranking from 27th to the top 10 in three years.
According to the results of a survey conducted by the panel between July 23 and July 27 at Taoyuan airport’s two terminals, passengers are mostly dissatisfied with 16 of the most important services at the airport, such as expensive food, the airport’s surrounding landscape, defective luggage trolleys and unclear direction signs in the transit area.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
AMENDMENT: Contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau must be reported, and failure to comply could result in a prison sentence, the proposal stated The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday voted against a proposed bill by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers that would require elected officials to seek approval before visiting China. DPP Legislator Puma Shen’s (沈伯洋) proposed amendments to 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), stipulate that contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau should be reported, while failure to comply would be punishable by prison sentences of up to three years, alongside a fine of NT$10 million (US$309,041). Fifty-six voted with the TPP in opposition
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai