The Taipei International Flora Expo’s organizing committee will hold a drill with staff on Friday before a 20-day trial operation begins on Oct. 9.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), whose slow response to the controversies surrounding the expo has cost him support in recent opinion polls, said yesterday the city government would use the drill to simulate different scenarios that could confront the event and enhance the crisis management ability of the staff.
The expo will begin trial operations on Oct. 9, running through Oct. 28 to incrementally test the capacity of different exhibition sites and traffic.
City government spokesperson Chao Hsin-ping (趙心屏) said the test would involve four phases, with the number of visitors allowed in the exhibition sites starting at 5,000 and increasing to 70,000.
Expo volunteers will be invited to visit the 14 exhibition sites from Oct. 9 to Oct. 24, while residents of Taipei City’s Zhongshan (中山) and Datong (大同) districts, where most of the exhibition sites are located, will be given invitations to visit the expo from Oct. 25 to Oct. 28.
The exhibition sites at Yuanshan Park, Xinsheng Park, Dajia Riverside Park and the area around the Taipei Fine Arts Museum are located in the two districts.
A total of 62 participating cities from 33 countries will take part in the trial operations, she said.
The expo will be held from Nov. 6 to April 26 next year at 14 sites around Taipei. The city estimates the event will attract about 8 million visitors.
In response to concerns about the maintenance of flowers and plants at the expo, Hau said the city government has signed contracts with farmers stating that the flowers and plants should be well maintained during the six-month expo.
“The contracted farmers are required to keep the flowers and plants in the best of conditions during the expo and we will make sure they fulfil the contract,” 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
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