Starting from Monday, taxi companies will also be able to apply for government subsidies to replace their older vehicles, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday.
A policy to subsidize the purchase of new cars by taxi drivers was announced last year. The policy applied only to independent taxi drivers whose cars have been in operation for more than 14 years.
The ministry has gradually loosened restrictions to include motor vehicles that have been in operation for more than seven years.
Applicants must agree to undergo training designed to enhance the quality of their service before they can receive the subsidy.
Each qualified applicant will be eligible for a subsidy of NT$40,000, NT$30,000 of which is provided by the ministry and NT$10,000 from the Environmental Protection Administration.
As of Monday this week, the ministry has received a total of 1,962 applications for the subsidy. Only 25 percent of the applications involved cars that have been in operation for more than 14 years. Those that have been in operation for between 10 and 14 years accounted for 38 percent of the applications. Thirty-seven percent of the applications involved cars that have been in operation for between seven and 10 years.
Further analysis of the applicants showed that 45 percent of them were independent taxi drivers. Thirty-two percent were independent taxi drivers who joined a licensed taxi company for insurance and other reasons, while 22 percent were driving cars owned by taxi companies.
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
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
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