Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday promised to continue improving the city’s administrative efficiency and service after Taipei Citizen Hotline 1999 and the city’s household registration offices won top awards for excellent service.
The awards were presented by the Chinese-language Global Vision Magazine in its annual review of the services in public and private sectors.
The magazine asked 20 “secret customers” to review the service of 283 private companies and government bodies between April 1 and Sept. 10.
The hotline, launched in 2005, won the top award in the “1999 citizen hotline services” category, beating out those from other cities.
The city’s household registration offices topped those offered by other local governments.
Taipei’s hotline offers fast and top-quality service in addressing all kinds of issues from residents, with an implementation rate of more than 90 percent, Hau said.
“Hotline staff take more than 7,000 calls every day, and we severely punish those who fail to address residents’ concerns,” he said.
It has also addressed issues outside the city’s remit, such as complaints about exhibitions at National Palace Museum, he said.
The call center was modeled on New York City’s “311” hotline, and is staffed by 117 operators. The city’s hotline was integrated with similar services in New Taipei City (新北市) and Keelung, so that people in those areas can access government information quickly.
Department of Civil Affairs Commissioner Huang Lu Ching-ju (黃呂錦茹) said Taipei’s household registration offices are known for their efficiency and service, and his department would instruct the offices to continue to provide the best service possible to residents.
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
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
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