In light of serious misuse of the 110 police emergency call system by the public, legislators are working toward introducing penalties to try to deter such practices, the Chinese-language United Evening News reported yesterday.
Democratic Progressive Party legislators Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) and Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱), and People First Party Legislator Chen Yi-chieh (陳怡潔) have launched an initiative to amend the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法) to impose detention of up to three days or a fine of up to NT$12,000 for people who misuse the system, the report said.
Misuse of the 119 fire-related emergency call system is punishable by a maximum fine of NT$15,000. Spurious 110 calls are not currently subject to punishment.
Citing statistics from the National Police Agency, Chen was quoted as saying that the 110 emergency services received more than 6.2 million calls last year, nearly 50 percent of which were harassing in nature or simply made for inquiry purposes.
Between May and December last year, there were 131,875 calls from “people with mental disorders,” 130,876 harassing calls, 18,081 calls from “drunk people” and 1,025 hoax calls, she 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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