The number of special municipalities in the nation is not a problem, but the lack of regional developments strategies is, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday in Taipei.
“The problem for Taiwan is not whether we have three or six special municipalities,” Tsai said on the sidelines of a diving school event.
“The problem is that when the [current] Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] government planned the new special municipalities not long after it was sworn in, political considerations outweighed having more integral design to balance regional development, bridge the difference between cities and rural areas and territorial planning,” she said.
Tsai’s comments came after Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said on Saturday night that there should only be three special municipalities — one in the north, the center and south, not six.
He said having six was a “messed-up decision” and that whoever came up with it was “detestable.”
Tsai said the DPP would review the issue if it is returned to power, adding that during the campaigns for the Nov. 29 nine-in-one elections last year, she and the party had proposed major cities should work with their surrounding counties and smaller cities nearby when drafting development plans, instead of altering the administrative boundaries or status of cities and counties.
Taipei became a special municipality in 1967 and Kaohsiung was upgraded in 1979.
More than a decade ago, Taipei County, Taichung and Tainan began pressing to upgrade their status, and in 2010 the Ministry of the Interior approved the upgrades.
On Dec. 25, 2010, Taipei County became New Taipei City, Taichung city and county were merged into one entity and Tainan city and county merged into another. In August 2012 Taoyuan proposed a merger with Taoyuan County to gain special municipality status and the change was made on Dec. 25 last year.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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,