To encourage reporting of suspected food safety breaches in the wake of a series of food scares, Taichung is to raise its rewards for informants who provide information that leads to the discovery of food safety violations to up to 70 percent of the fine collected. The policy’s effectiveness had been questioned, because of the city’s low reward disbursement rate.
The city government raised the maximum reward from 50 percent to 70 percent of the fine imposed — entitling informants to as much as NT$140 million (US$4.6 million) in rewards, as the maximum fine for food safety breaches is set at NT$200 million — Taichung City Councilor Chiang Chao-kuo (江肇國) said.
However, while the city government since 2011 has penalized 1,680 breaches of food safety regulations out of the 4,649 reported cases it attended, it paid only NT$65,500 in rewards to informants out of the NT$140 million in fines collected, Chiang said.
Less than 0.5 percent of the fines recovered have been paid out to tipsters as rewards, only NT$39 for each report, which compromises the government’s efforts to boost public enthusiasm for reporting potential food safety concerns, he said.
There are two reasons for the low rate of disbursement: 30 percent of the informants went unrewarded because they filed the reports anonymously, while most of the remaining 70 percent who were eligible for rewards have not claimed them, he said, citing information provided by the Taichung Health Bureau.
The bureau should redouble its efforts to protect informants’ personal information to encourage people to report wrongdoing without remaining anonymous, while promoting the reward policy and paying out rewards to motivate the public to help ensure food safety, he said.
Taichung Health Bureau Director Hsu Yung-nien (徐永年) said that, according to the criterion for reports established by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, an informant is required to provide incriminating evidence against violators, and the bureau, after ascertaining the validity, will reward the informant.
The bureau called for the public to report violations by food manufacturers and not to disclose personal information when making reports, he said.
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