The Legislative Yuan is to open the first childcare center attached to a central government office next month, the proposed center’s management said last week, adding that people who work at the legislature, public servants and the general public can enroll their children.
New Taipei City Infant and Child Care Association is to provide care for children up to two years old and the center can accept up to 40 children, association official Pao Chung-ming (包崇明) said.
Enrollments are to be awarded preferentially to the children of lawmakers and legislature staff, then other public institution staff and the general public, he said.
The registration fee is NT$12,000 for a six-month period, plus a monthly NT$15,000 fee for families in the first order of preference, and NT$17,000 for others.
Families with legal residency in Taipei can receive a subsidy of up to NT$8,500 per month from the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Taipei City Government, Pao said.
The has met rigorous fire safety standards set by the Legislative Yuan and the Taipei Department of Social Welfare, he added.
Legislative speaker Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) has been pushing for a childcare center at the legislature since he began his term in February last year, the legislature’s Personnel Department director Tseng Ming-fa (曾明發) said.
The center has double-glazed windows to insulate it from outside noise to help prevent demonstrations outside the building disturbing the children, Tseng said.
The Legislative Yuan is in talks with the police to direct protests away from the center, Legislative Yuan Secretary-General Lin Chih-chia (林志嘉) 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
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the