Starting on Saturday, Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) public announcements will also be made in Indonesian and Vietnamese at nine railway stations, mostly along the west coast, agency officials said yesterday.
These stations are in Taipei, New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋), Taoyuan, Taoyuan’s Jhungli District (中壢), Taichung, Changhua, Tainan, Kaohsiung and Pingtung, which have been identified as ones that are frequently used by migrant workers from Southeast Asian countries.
The majority of migrant workers are from Indonesia and Vietnam, so announcements in Indonesian and Vietnamese would be broadcast inside the stations on weekends, when migrant workers usually gather to meet friends.
The announcements will be platform information for departing trains and safety instructions, while Indonesian and Vietnamese-speaking volunteers will also be at the visitor centers in these stations on weekends, the TRA said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Li-chan (林麗禪), a Cambodian immigrant of Chinese descent, helped make the announcement service available, the agency said.
Having lived in Taiwan for almost two decades, Lin said she pushed for such services because Taiwan is now home to about 500,000 immigrants, some of whom want to contribute to local society, while the number of migrant workers has reached 630,000, and most depend heavily on the railway system.
“While the government is determined to push the ‘New Southbound Policy’ that encourages closer relations with Southeast Asian countries, the public transportation system is not friendly enough to visitors from these countries,” she said.
Each station master can choose to broadcast public announcements in one or both of the languages during times when the most migrant workers would access their stations, she said, adding that she would be happy to see more railway stations offering such services to migrant workers.
The lawmaker also promised to propose a budget for the TRA for more Indonesian and Vietnamese-speaking translators, adding that she would also mobilize immigrants to support the initiative.
TRA Deputy Director-General Ho Hsien-lin (何獻霖) said the agency has recruited 18 volunteers who can speak either Indonesian or Vietnamese, as well as several part-time workers, who began assisting at visitor information desks on Feb. 25.
Not only do they serve passengers from Southeast Asian countries, they help serve older travelers as well, he said.
Taipei Railway Station Master Huang Jung-hua (黃榮華) said the Taipei station plans to broadcast public announcements in Thai as well, although it has yet to decide when to make the service available.
Public announcements are currently made in Mandarin, Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese), Hakka and English.
As most Filipino migrant workers understand English, there is no need to record public announcements in their language, Huang said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS