President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday instructed the National Fire Agency to follow the example of the Taipei City Government and set up paramedic teams under local fire departments so they can offer emergency services before rushing patients to hospital.
Taipei City’s Fire Department is the only local fire department that is equipped with an emergency service unit. The Golden Phoenix Emergency Service Unit, established in 1999 under Ma’s term as Taipei mayor, has trained more than 400 firemen as emergency medical technicians, and as of last month, they have helped more than 300 people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
Addressing the celebration of the unit’s 11th anniversary yesterday, Ma used the occasion to laud Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) for continuing the promotion of the unit and other municipal policies.
“Municipal work is like a relay race, and the development of the city will continue only when each runner performs excellently … I think my successor has exceeded me in doing municipal work,” Ma said at the Taipei City Hall, adding that emergency medical service gives patients better and more prompt service.
The government will also make budget allocations for local fire departments to form such units, Ma said.
Hau thanked Ma for his compliments and said the president’s approval will boost his support in November’s Taipei mayoral election.
“President Ma is a former Taipei mayor and is very familiar with municipal work. His compliment is definitely a bonus for the election campaign,” said Hau, who is seeking re-election.
As Hau’s support rate continues to drop amid a bribery scandal surrounding the Xinsheng Overpass reconstruction project and Taipei International Flora Expo, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has been devoting more effort to campaigning for him.
Ma, who also doubles as the KMT’s chairman, will attend another municipal event with Hau today, and campaign for Hau again tomorrow to celebrate the launch of his campaign headquarters.
The Hau team also stepped up efforts aimed at boosting Hau’s support rate by inviting political commentators and politicians to endorse municipal projects.
The city government will invite a group of pan-blue politicians and political talk show hosts such as Jaw Shao-kong (趙少康) to visit the flora expo this morning.
Hau yesterday confirmed the visit, but denied asking them to endorse the event.
“We will invite opinion leaders from various fields to visit the expo sites and give us advice so that we can fix the problems before the event begins,” he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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