Police presence has been stepped up nationwide as Taipei prepares for the Universiade, with Premier Lin Chuan (林全) instructing the National Police Agency to reward officers who perform to a high level.
Officers who show good performance while on duty at major events and while managing large-scale protests should be financially rewarded, Lin said, adding that the measure would remain in place after the Universiade.
The Executive Yuan said it would use its secondary budget reserve to fund rewards for the remainder of the year.
Photo provided by the Universiade Executive Committee
More than 5,000 regular officers, as well as 2,000 officers-in-training will be on duty during the Universiade, National Police Agency Director-General Chen Kuo-en (陳國恩) said on Thursday.
The agency would prepare a report with budget estimates for the rewards, Chen added.
The Executive Yuan said it has been holding regular meetings with various departments to discuss public security during the Universiade and other major events, adding that it has emphasized the games given their international nature.
Meetings have focused on response measures to terror attacks, among other things, it said.
“Anti-terror efforts are very important — nothing can be left to chance. That is why we are putting so much emphasis on police performance,” an Executive Yuan source said.
An officer’s overtime compensation is capped at NT$17,000, or 100 hours, per month, Chen said.
Normally, officers are capped at NT$12,000, with New Taipei City officers receiving up to an additional NT$3,000 from the city government, Chen said, adding that caps have been exceeded as one-third of officers nationwide are working excessive overtime hours.
“Especially with the Universiade coming up, officers have been working extra hard implementing a number of public safety measures… This is why Premier Lin wanted to discuss rewarding officers for their extra work,” Chen said.
“But not just the Universiade — we are looking at public safety at all major events. For example, annual lantern festivals and large-scale protests outside the Legislative Yuan are among the major events we discussed,” he added.
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
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
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,