Hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese computer engineers would likely be hurt by the cross-strait service trade agreement due to the potential influx of cheaper Chinese workers, computer software representatives said yesterday.
“Young entry-level engineers are likely to be the first batch of victims of the pact because they could be replaced by cheaper, more experienced Chinese counterparts,” computer engineer Shen Chia-hung (沈佳弘) told a press conference organized by the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU).
A public hearing on the potential impact of the agreement on the computer industry will be held today at the Legislative Yuan.
Shen said national security would also be a concern if Chinese engineers are hired to work by companies that have won government contracts because they might spy for Beijing.
Software company owner Chien Wen-nan (錢文南) said there would be an advantage to hiring Chinese white-collar workers because firms would not be required to pay them the minimum monthly wage.
The government’s liberalization of Taiwan’s Type II telecommunications business has ignored an important key point by underestimated Beijing’s influence via the Internet, he said.
“Nowadays people spend more time on the Internet than on the telephone, which is why if Chinese investment is allowed in the telecommunications industry, news censorship and surveillance could be an issue,” Shen said.
The agreement allows Chinese firms to send its white-collar employees to Taiwan for up to three years, TSU Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) 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
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
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,