Officials yesterday denied reports that the government would designate a total of 115 days in national holidays next year, the largest holiday load in recent years.
Personnel Administration Minister Frank Huang (黃富源) said next year’s holiday calendar would be finalized in the middle of next month.
The Chinese-language United Daily News reported yesterday that next year’s Lunar New Year holidays would run for nine days from Feb. 9 to Feb. 17.
Three other long-weekends — at least three days in length — would include New Year’s Day from Dec. 30 to Jan. 1, Tomb-Sweeping Day from April 3 to April 7 and Moon Festival from Sept. 19 to Sept. 22, the report said.
To make up for the two work days designated as days off in order to connect a regular holiday to weekend holidays in April and September, people would need to work on a Saturday on April 13 and Sept. 14, it added, saying that people would also need to work on Feb. 23, a Saturday, to make up for Feb. 15, a Friday designated as a holiday to create the nine-day Lunar New Year holiday.
Along with Lunar New Year, students would have a 30-day break in winter from Jan. 19 to Feb. 17, the United Daily News reported.
In a press statement, Huang said the reported calendar was one of two proposals his agency had recently presented to the Executive Yuan following discussions with government agencies and business groups.
In the other proposal, the Lunar New Year holiday would only be six days long, he said.
Business groups also differed with Ministry of the Interior officials on whether April 3, a Wednesday, should be designated as a holiday, Huang said.
The ministry suggested that April 3 should be a day off to celebrate Children’s Day, which normally falls on April 4 and was reinstated as a national holiday in late 2010 because Tomb-Sweeping Day happens to fall on April 4 next year, but business groups disagreed with the idea, Huang said.
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
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