The government welcomes young overseas Chinese to study in Taiwan and stay and work after graduation, Overseas Community Affairs Council Minister Steven Chen (陳士魁) said on Sunday in Manila.
Chen encouraged Chinese Filipinos to take advantage of a new Taiwanese program for recruiting non-Taiwanese graduates to join its workforce.
Under the “action plan” announced in July, foreign students graduating from Taiwanese institutions of higher learning who pass an evaluation covering eight factors, including language ability and educational background, will be issued an employment permit by the Ministry of Labor.
Taiwan hopes the plan, which aims to “nurture, retain and recruit” talent for the nation’s workforce, will draw 2,000 in its first year.
Pitching it as a “win-win-win” policy, Chen said that accepting more overseas students could reduce the pressure on Taiwanese universities troubled by lower birth rates, find a market for Taiwanese university teachers to sell their abilities and boost the nation’s competitiveness by recruiting competent young workers from among local college graduates.
Chen promoted the policy while attending an event to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of an ethnic Chinese youth service group in Manila on Saturday.
He also talked about the program on Sunday morning during a meeting of executives of Chinese schools in the Philippines, accompanied by Representative to the Philippines Gary Lin (林松煥).
Lin also invited Chinese Filipinos to join the program, saying that Taiwan’s beauty lies not just in its infrastructure and natural environment, but also in its legacy and improvement of Chinese culture.
“Advanced studies in Taiwanese colleges and universities would be a wise choice for your students,” Lin told the Chinese schools’ leaders.
During his visits to various ethnic Chinese groups, Chen said he was meeting “current good friends” and “reconnecting with old ones who had been somewhat alienated” over the past years.
He thanked the ethnic Chinese community’s support for the government of the Republic of China in the first years after moving to Taiwan in 1949.
The investments in Taiwan by ethnic Chinese in the Philippines during the 1950s and the 1960s helped Taiwan develop its economy, and it is particularly heart-warming to recall how the ethnic Chinese youth groups had visited Taiwan to cheer up its armed forces, Chen 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
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