The Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) said its employee schedules for the Lunar New Year will be released before the holiday begins.
The agency plans to operate all-night trains on Feb. 14, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve, and on Feb. 19, the fourth day of the lunar new year, with tickets being discounted 30 percent, in a bid to shift some of the peak holiday crowds, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) said last week.
The death of a train conductor, surnamed Chang (張), late last month and the latest amendments to Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) have led to public concern that train drivers and other staff might be overworked during the holiday period, Cheng said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications should publicize the TRA’s Lunar New Year holiday schedules because meeting the public’s demand for maximum convenience often means infringing upon the labor rights of transportation sector employees.
By making schedules available early, the TRA would encourage the public to offer suggestions for potentially better options, Cheng said.
As a government agency and a public transport operator, the TRA should strive to be an example for others in the industry, he said.
The TRA’s ability to facilitate travel during the holiday could face challenges in light of the second amendment to the act, which has only increase public concern with how the TRA arranges its employees’ schedules, Cheng said.
TRA Director-General Jason Lu (鹿潔身) had promised a new schedule that conforms to the amended act, while the Ministry of Transportation and Communications has promised to release shift schedules prior to the holiday, Cheng said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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