The government will not adopt a policy of charging freeway users by the number of kilometers traveled until the usage rate of on-board units (OBU) reaches 65 percent, Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said yesterday.
“For us to implement the policy, the condition is that the OBU usage rate must reach 65 percent,” Mao told the legislature’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee after being asked by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) to comment on a controversy over the freeway electronic toll collecting (ETC) system.
Private contractor Far Eastern Toll Collecting Co (FETC) was officially informed by the National Freeway Bureau (NFB) last week that it had broken their contract by failing to raise the OBU usage rate to 50 percent by last month. The bureau has said that it would be inappropriate to cancel the contract with FETC and revert the toll-collecting system into a state-run operation.
Meanwhile, Mao faced several questions from lawmakers over plans by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) to change its name to the Ministry of Transportation and Construction next year under a government restructuring policy.
To help employees at the MOTC’s National Expressway Engineering Bureau, the NFB and the Directorate-General of Highways, as well as four harbor bureaus, deal with restructuring, the ministry will encourage current employees to take either the General Examination or Senior Examinations to obtain official civil servant status.
At present, the agencies under the ministry hire employees using the Civil Servant Employment Act (公務人員任用法) and the Statutes Governing the Employment of Transportation-Related Enterprise Personnel (交通事業人員任用條例).
Mao said agreement on using the two examinations for all civil servants was the result of negotiations among different government agencies.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
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COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai