Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday voted on 26 draft policies that Taipei residents proposed for Daan District (大安), which are to be put to a plebiscite via the city’s i-Voting online platform as part of “participatory budgeting” project.
The policies — which were proposed by residents who graduated from i-Voting classes offered by the city government — ranged from tourism, welfare packages for elderly people, parking and child safety to environmental protection.
A policy proposed by a woman named Chang Tzu-ning (張孜寧) aims to revitalize vacant houses by asking the city government to lease them to the homeless, elderly and people with meager salaries before putting them on the rental market.
Chang said that many landlords are reluctant to rent properties to old people.
She said she lives in Wanhua District (萬華), where homeless people abound, but she made the proposal for Daan, as housing is a citywide problem.
A policy drafted by a resident named Tsai Yi-shan (蔡宜珊) calls for more public daycare centers to encourage people to have babies.
The high costs of raising children discourages Taipei couples from having children, which exacerbates the nation’s low birth rate, she said.
After being briefed on the draft policies, Ko voted for 16 that he said he was most satisfied with.
“The government’s policymaking should be open and transparent. It should encourage public participation. These are my central beliefs,” Ko said.
“Participatory budgeting is a policy based solely on residents’ proposals, with its premise being that residents are the ones who know their communities best,” he said. “By asking residents to indicate their needs and having the government respond, direct democracy can be realized.”
The polls opened last week and run until 5pm on Wednesday next week. Taipei residents aged 18 or older can vote on the event’s Web site: https://ivoting.taipei.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai