Legislators inspecting Taipei International Flora Exposition sites yesterday morning squabbled with visitors who accused them of putting on a show and causing inconvenience.
Seven legislators across the political spectrum on the Economics Committee visited the expo’s Yuanshan Park and Xinsheng Park areas to inspect preparations for the six-month event, since the multibillion-dollar project included about NT$3 billion (US$97.3 million) in funding from the Council of Agriculture.
The expo, which officially opens on Nov. 6, covers four sites: at Yuanshan Park, Xinsheng Park, Fine Arts Park and Dajia Riverside Park.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
While the legislative delegation was inspecting toilets and giving reporters their impressions of the facilities, a woman who wanted to use the ladies’ room complained about the cluster of people outside, to which the legislators said they were outside the men’s room, not the ladies’ room.
Restrooms were a key focus of the inspection after media reports that the men’s restroom did not have individual urinals but a gutter system.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Pan Meng-an (潘孟安) said such a facility might violate personal privacy, adding that he used such a urinal when he was in elementary school and in the military — or when traveling in China.
DPP Legislator Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠) said toilets were very important at an international event like the flora expo and she did not think a gutter-like urinal was appropriate.
DPP Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) said jokingly that the “unique design” was very “impressive.”
However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) said the urinal gutter had a smooth water flow and privacy concerns were addressed by dividers.
Some visitors complained that the delegation’s visit was simply a show and that their 90-minute inspection created unnecessary -inconvenience and disturbances for other visitors.
Pan said the Economics Committee had a responsibility to see how taxpayers’ money was being spent on the event. If the expo was a success, it would benefit the flower industry, he said.
However, he complained that he could not hear the group’s tour guide and they were not given enough time to see the exhibits and pavilions.
A successful expo would improve Taiwan’s image, Wong said, adding she would like to see more flowers when the event officially opens.
KMT Legislator Chang Chia-chun (張嘉郡), who had a baby in June, said she would like to bring her baby to the expo venues to see how friendly the facilities were to new mothers. Some roads appeared uneven, she said, although the nursing rooms looked great and were equipped with “five star” provisions.
Ting said the two sites he viewed looked fantastic and compared well with international standards.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching