A raft of new programs and government policies that are expected to bring benefits to society at large will take effect today.
Among them is a child welfare program sponsored by the Ministry of the Interior, which will allow Taiwanese families with an annual household income of less than NT$1.5 million (US$50,000) and families to receive a monthly stipend of NT$3,000 for each child under 2 years of age.
Families in all income brackets will also be eligible to receive the stipend after the birth of a third child.
In Taipei City, a campaign to boost the city’s birth rate will also be launched starting today. Couples who have lived in the city for more than a year will be offered an incentive of NT$20,000 for each newborn child, once at least one of the parents has recognized household registration in the city.
The campaign also allows a monthly subsidy of NT$2,500 to be granted to families for children under the age of five years, providing the parents are registered Taipei City residents who have lived in the city for more than a year and are in an income tax bracket that places them in the bottom 20 percent of income earners.
Other policy changes and initiatives that will also take effect today include the decision to increase the country’s monthly minimum wage from NT$17,280 to NT$17,880 and the hourly minimum wage from NT$95 to NT$98.
The EU visa waiver privilege for Taiwanese passport holders traveling to the Schengen Area and three EU member states will also take effect on Jan. 11.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
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