The Taiwan Fund for Children and Families yesterday voiced its concern over the increasing number of children from economically disadvantaged families who are exposed to illegal drugs, citing a survey that tracked more than 4,000 children from these families over a five-year period.
“In 2009, we picked 4,000 from the 50,000 children that the foundation helps take care of and tracked them for five years,” foundation executive director Betty Ho (何素秋) told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
“Over the years, we have noticed many issues that need more public attention. However, there is one issue that is particularly worrying, and that is nearly 10 percent of respondents in the focus group said they have seen illegal drugs either through friends or in nightclubs,” Ho said.
Photo: Chen Ping-hung, Taipei Times
“Ten percent of 4,000 children, that is 400 [children]. It is a huge number,” Ho added.
Foundation research and development director Wei Chi-li (魏季李) agreed, adding that the problem was worsening.
“According to our figures, as many as 6.9 percent of the children surveyed said they had seen illegal drugs [in 2009], and the number jumped to 9.6 percent this time,” Wei said. “If they have seen illegal drugs, some of them may have actually done drugs, so it is a really a cause for concern.”
Aside from the drug issue, a large percentage of children from disadvantaged families face more challenges in life.
“These children face three major problems: the first is food, second is education and third is coping with daily life,” Ho said.
She added that this year’s survey showed that more than 40 percent of respondents said they skip breakfast, more than 60 percent said they do not regularly have three meals a day and 30 percent said they intentionally skip meals to help their families save money.
“As for education, most of the families cannot afford to send their children to tutorial classes. More than 70 percent of the parents also said they do not have time to help their children with their homework because they are busy working to make a living,” Ho said.
To help the government and academics better understand the problems that children from disadvantaged families face, Ho said the group has created a database on children of disadvantaged families.
“We welcome researchers to contact us to use the information, so that they may come up with better policies to help the children combat these challenges,” Ho said.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS