Taipei’s “Smooth Roads Project,” initiated by Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), appears to have not done enough to improve road conditions in the capital, as a female resident in New Taipei City (新北市) has reportedly been paying out of her own pocket to single-handedly refill numerous potholes in the two cities late at night for the past three months.
According to a news report by SET-TV, the woman, surnamed Lee (李), is an office worker who commutes between New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) and Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖).
Lee was said to have embarked on her self-funded road-paving mission after being fed up with the many potholes and uneven paving she faced on her daily commute. To avoid disrupting traffic, Lee opted to do the work in the middle of the night, applying asphalt to every pothole she came across.
Over the course of three months, Lee said she has used 1,200kg of asphalt in her effort to make the two cities’ roads safer.
While expressing gratitude for Lee’s efforts, Taipei City Government spokesperson Chang Chi-chiang (張其強) yesterday said the city government does not encourage residents to follow suit because paving a road requires physical strength and professional expertise, and working alone in the middle of the night could also be dangerous.
“Residents are advised to report potholes in the city using the 1999 hotline, upon which the city government will immediately dispatch staff to address the matter,” Chang said.
Taipei City’s New Construction Office deputy chief Lin Chih-feng (林志峰) said there were many factors that could account for the city’s potholes, such as periodic downpours and the service life of the roads.
“Should people come across any potholes before the city government’s inspectors do, they should call the 1999 hotline and a team of workers will be sent to the reported sites within an hour for restoration,” Lin said.
As for Lee’s endeavors, Lin said she had helped fill a number of potholes on the roads and some holes in the sidewalks in Neihu District.
“However, because the latter still require tile repair, the city government has sent out a team to first remove the asphalt [applied by Lee] and then carry out repairs,” Lin 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
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