Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday said the central government should request additional funding for outlying islands because a national fund ensuring their development had sunk dangerously low.
Twenty-two KMT legislators, including Chen Fu-hai (陳福海) and Tsao Erh-chang (曹爾忠), proposed that the government request a minimum budget of NT$3 billion (US$100,000) per year for the Offshore Islands Development Fund (離島建設基金) to facilitate construction on the nation’s outlying islands and ensure the sustainability of the fund.
The fund was established in 2001 with the stipulation that its financial resources should remain at NT$30 billion.
Under Article 16 of the Offshore Islands Development Act (離島建設條例), the government must help the fund ensure that this level is maintained by requesting annual budgets for a period of 10 years if necessary.
The government reached the goal by earmarking about NT$3.2 billion every year between 2001 and last year, and NT$1.2 billion this year.
However, about NT$3 billion was spent annually between 2001 and 2005, and about NT$1.2 billion per year between 2006 and this year, to subsidize construction projects on the islands.
The legislators said they were concerned about the financial status of the fund, as less than NT$10 billion remained after the expenditures from the past decade.
Tsao told the Executive Yuan’s Offshore Islands Development Committee last month that the fund could be completely consumed in four years if the government failed to appropriate new budgets for the fund.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) has previously promised to seek the budget request. He said that construction projects on the outlying islands would not be affected by the budget concerns.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
RSS