Yunlin County could face a funding shortfall of about NT$1 billion (US$31.94 million) in October, but the county is working on cutting back spending and raising income by auctioning land, county officials said on Wednesday.
Since the county does not expect to receive any tax revenue until November — when the county is to collect land value taxes — it expects the shortfall to occur in October, county officials said, adding that the money is needed to pay the salaries of government employees, for public works and for social welfare projects.
Yunlin had total debts of NT$30.75 billion as of last month, Department of Finance Director Hung Jen-sheng (洪仁聲) said.
That translates into an average debt of about NT$34,000 for each county resident, Hung said.
“The debt means that Yunlin County has no room to borrow more funds under budget regulations. However, the county is determined to cut its spending and look for new revenue sources to address its financial difficulties,” she said.
Yunlin County Commissioner Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) has pledged to cut his monthly special budget of NT$66,000, while the government also plans to slash spending on public affairs and subsidies, Hung said.
She said the county government is planning to auction public land.
“Since the beginning of the year, the Yunlin County Government has seen the urgency of reining in its spending and raising its income due to its large debt. We are working on a package to deal with the problems,” Hung said.
She said that the county government would release details of a package soon on how to tackle the debt.
“We have faith that we will be able to overcome financial difficulties, so it is unlikely that Yunlin would seek financial assistance from the central government as Miaoli County has done,” Hung said.
The Miaoli County Government has asked for a bailout from the central bank as the county is NT$64.8 billion in debt and needs to spend NT$600 million in salaries for staff and an additional NT$600 million in pensions this month alone.
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
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