The Ministry of Education is encouraging more elementary and junior-high schools around the country to set up their own kitchens to ensure that student lunches are cooked properly and prepared with safe ingredients, a senior ministry official said yesterday.
The ministry is aiming to get at least 90 percent of all elementary and junior-high schools to establish their own kitchens within the next five years, Department of Physical Education head Wang Chun-chuan (王俊權) said.
“Only by encouraging schools to open up their own kitchens can the ministry effectively oversee the safety of school lunch meals,” Wang said.
At present, about 80 percent of elementary and junior-high schools have their own kitchens or order meals prepared at kitchens in neighboring schools, said Wang, whose department is responsible for the health of students.
However, occasional cases of food poisoning from lunches provided by vendors and recent corruption scandals involving lunch contracts have convinced the ministry that more schools need to take control over food preparation.
Wang said many schools, especially those in metropolitan areas with efficient transportation networks and plenty of external food vendors to choose from, have found it easier to order food from vendors than to manage a kitchen, leading to an array of problems.
It is much harder to monitor the safety of food prepared by outside suppliers than it is to monitor meals made in-house. In addition, transporting the lunches is detrimental to fuel conservation and emission reduction efforts, Wang said.
Aside from encouraging the installation of school kitchens, the ministry will also reinforce inspections of private meal suppliers to check on food safety standards in cooperation with local education and health units, Wang said.
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was sentenced to six months in prison, commutable to a fine, by the New Taipei District Court today for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) in a case linked to an alleged draft-dodging scheme. Wang allegedly paid NT$3.6 million (US$114,380) to an illegal group to help him evade mandatory military service through falsified medical documents, prosecutors said. He transferred the funds to Chen Chih-ming (陳志明), the alleged mastermind of a draft-evasion ring, although he lost contact with him as he was already in detention on fraud charges, they said. Chen is accused of helping a
SECURITY: Starlink owner Elon Musk has taken pro-Beijing positions, and allowing pro-China companies to control Taiwan’s critical infrastructure is risky, a legislator said Starlink was reluctant to offer services in Taiwan because of the nation’s extremely high penetration rates in 4G and 5G services, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said yesterday. The ministry made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which reviewed amendments to Article 36 of the Telecommunications Management Act (電信管理法). Article 36 bans foreigners from holding more than 49 percent of shares in public telecommunications networks, while shares foreigners directly and indirectly hold are also capped at 60 percent of the total, unless specified otherwise by law. The amendments, sponsored by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
RSS