Foreigners employed at public or private universities approved by the Ministry of Education no longer need to apply for employment permits, regardless of the duration of their work.
Amendments to the Employment Service Act (就業服務法) passed by the legislature yesterday relaxed the requirements to encourage hiring of foreign academics.
The revision removed a restriction that set six months as the maximum duration foreign academics could work without needing a work permit.
Other amendments allow foreign students enrolled in public or registered private colleges, or universities, as well as Chinese students enrolled in a public or registered private high schools to work for four more hours per week — from 16 hours to 20 per week — except during winter and summer vacations.
Other changes to the act include measures to encourage women to re-enter the workforce, and adding people affected by domestic violence, people from low-income households and ex-convicts to those eligible to receive assistance in employment and, if necessary, be provided with a benefit.
The legislature also approved amendments to the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), scrapping a regulation that Chinese put in temporary detention awaiting deportation can be ordered to perform labor and specifying that they can be held in custody for no longer than 150 days, or 100 days for Hong Kong and Macau residents.
Chinese who are to be deported can now make claims for residence, and a review meeting has to be convened for claims made by those whose permission for residence has been revoked or repealed, as is stipulated in the Immigration Act (入出國及移民法).
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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