Muslim prayer rooms at a freeway service area on the Formosa Freeway (National Freeway No. 3) in Taichung’s Cingshuei District (清水) opened for use yesterday.
They are the nation’s first Muslim prayer rooms at a freeway service area.
Similar facilities already exist at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, the Taipei Railway Station and the Taichung High-speed Rail Station.
National Freeway Bureau Deputy Director-General Wu Mu-fu (吳木富) said the facilities mark the latest efforts by the government to attract more Muslim tourists from around the world.
“The nation has 14 freeway service areas, but the one in Cingshuei is the largest and the busiest. As such, we decided to build the first Muslim prayer rooms at a freeway service area constructed in Cingshuei,” Wu said.
Clear signposts showing the direction to the prayer rooms can be seen in the lobby of the main building in the service area, Wu said.
“We hope that more Muslim tourists visit Taiwan now that the prayer rooms are available for use,” he added. “In return, Muslim tourists from all over the world can bring to Taiwan the diversity of the Islamic culture, so people can gain a better understanding of it.”
The bureau said that before constructing the prayer rooms, it consulted the Chinese Muslims Association Taipei, the Taichung Mosque and the Tourism Bureau.
The two prayer rooms — one for men and one for women — are far enough from the shopping area to enable Muslim travelers to pray in an undisturbed environment, the bureau said.
Fitted with air conditioners, each prayer room has a sign pointing toward the direction of Mecca and prayer mats, the bureau said, adding that the rooms also have a waiting area and facilities to wash and dry oneself.
The restrooms near the prayer rooms are equipped with bidet toilets and telephones on the side of the doors to the prayer rooms can be used to call for assistance, the bureau added.
A recent survey by MasterCard ranked Taiwan a top-10 travel destination among nations that are not members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) both last year and this year.
Taiwan was also rated No. 1 and No. 3 in terms of safe travel environment and airport facilities respectively among non-OIC nations.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
Environmental groups yesterday filed an appeal with the Executive Yuan, seeking to revoke the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conditionally approved in February for the Hsieh-ho Power Plant’s planned fourth liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving station off the coast of Keelung. The appeal was filed jointly by the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and the Keelung City Taiwan Head Cultural Association, which together held a news conference outside the Executive Yuan in Taipei. Explaining the reasons for the appeal, Wang Hsing-chih (王醒之) of the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group said that the EIA failed to address
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked