The National Freeway Bureau on Thursday said it planned to lower the prices of cooked food sold at the freeway service areas by reducing the royalties paid to contractors.
Freeway service areas came under scrutiny recently after several customers complained they were being overcharged for food.
Bureau director general Tseng Dar-jen (曾大仁) said the royalties would be reduced from the 14 to 20 percent of revenue currently paid to between 5 and 9 percent.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
Tseng said other measures would be taken to ensure that customers are charged fairly at the service areas.
“The contractors in the service areas often include investment in infrastructure as part of operational costs and therefore increase how much they charge retailers in the service areas. The retailers then recoup the money by overcharging customers,” Tseng said.
“Now we want to restrict their investment to indoor facilities only, while the bureau will handle maintenance of the external infrastructure,” Tseng said.
Tseng said the bureau would also review the contracts between contractors and retailers after they are notarized.
The bureau also now requires that the commissions submitted by the retailers to contractors be reduced from 35 percent of revenue to 25 percent.
Rather than compare food prices at freeway service areas with those at food courts in department stores, Tseng said the bureau would assess food prices on college campuses near the service areas to determine whether the same food in the same quantity costs more in the service area.
As an incentive, food stalls that receive a rating of “excellent” for their quality of service for four years in a row will be granted a two-year extension before theyhave to renegotiate their contract, Tseng said.
Tseng said the bureau expected that all contractors would abide by the new regulations by 2014.
The Taian (泰安) Service Area in Miaoli County has already implemented the new rules and has lowered the markup price for food by about 20 percent, he said.
In related news, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) yesterday launched a “yield to pedestrians” campaign aimed at protecting the elderly and children when they cross roads.
“Not giving right of way to pedestrians is one of the main causes of traffic accidents,” MOTC Minister Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said. “Children and the elderly are a high-risk group. Drivers may not see children because they are shorter than other pedestrians, whereas seniors walk slower.”
About 10,000 professional drivers from public bus companies, taxi services and delivery companies have joined the campaign, the ministry 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
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