Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday promised to make no adjustments to public transportation fares in the wake of recent fuel price increases, stressing that there would be no fare increases during his term in office.
Gasoline and diesel prices rose by an average of 10.7 percent last week, the steepest pace in nearly four years, following a decision by the Ministry of Economic Affairs to end a cap on fuel-price increases.
The price increases sparked concerns about higher fares on public transportation, as well as price rises of various other products.
New Party Taipei City Councilor Wang Hong-wei (王鴻薇) yesterday expressed concerns about fares on the city’s public transportation systems and school lunch fees in the wake of the fuel price rises, calling on the Taipei City Government to maintain its current fares.
“The fuel price increase has added a heavy burden to our residents and now there is speculation that fares on public transportation and school lunch fees will also increase. I hope the mayor can promise that no adjustments will be made,” she said during a -question-and--answer session at the Taipei City Council.
Hau said he had promised to keep the fares on the city’s buses and the MRT unchanged during his term and that promise remains unchanged despite the fuel price rises.
“The city government has always encouraged the public to take advantage of the public transportation system and we will make no fare adjustments on the city’s buses and the MRT during my term,” Hau said.
Following the fuel price increases, the Department of Transportation said it would closely examine the formula for calculating fares proposed by bus companies and continue to work with companies to resolve the issue of mounting fuel costs and the related subsidies.
Hau said he would instruct the city’s Department of Education to handle the issue of school lunch fees with caution, but added that the city government would ensure the continuation of the free school lunch program for disadvantaged children and students from low-income families.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the