The Executive Yuan yesterday said it had activated an intergovernmental mechanism to offer resources to businesses affected by the global economic downturn and to map out medium and long-term countermeasures.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) made the remarks at the weekly Cabinet meeting after he was briefed on a draft proposal to deal with the impact of the eurozone debt crisis on Taiwan’s economy that was put forward after a meeting called by Vice Premier Sean Chen on Wednesday.
“Due to global economic turmoil, a handful of local businesses have enforced unpaid leave, which has caught the attention of the entire society. The government has to actively adopt measures,” an Executive Yuan statement quoted Wu as saying.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA), the National Science Council and the Financial Supervisory Commission, the agencies previously tasked with staying abreast of information about furlough plans adopted by entrepreneurs, “will take the initiative in helping them resolve difficulties,” Wu said.
Wu also instructed the CLA to improve a notification mechanism that has been set up for businesses to report the enactment of -furloughs to make sure that it details the -difference in the number of workers who have agreed to take unpaid days off and the number of workers actually on unpaid leave.
Meanwhile, Wu asked Chen to set up a task force to map out medium and long-term strategies to help local industries upgrade their competitiveness and to adapt to the world’s changing economic climate.
Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Sheng-chung (林聖忠) said that the ministry had formed a taskforce to reach out to businesses affected by the downturn to help them make good use of available resources provided by the government and in other channels that could carry them through difficulty.
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