PUBLIC AFFAIRS
Platform to accept foreigners
Residence permit holders in Taiwan will from June be able to submit tips and proposals to the National Development Council’s online policy platform, the council said. The Public Policy Participation Network Platform, established in February 2015, allows Taiwanese to share their views on public affairs. The Executive Yuan on Wednesday last week passed a review of the Directions for Implementing Online Participation in Public Policy, which allows residence permit holders to present proposals on the platform, council Director of Information Management Chuang Ming-fen (莊明芬) said. As of last month, the public had posted 5,190 proposals on the platform, 138 of which were recognized, the council said.
MIGRANT WORKERS
Ministry to rate brokers
The Ministry of Labor’s annual evaluation of brokerage companies for migrant workers is to begin on Monday, the ministry said, adding that the results would be published later this year. The ministry is to rate the performance of more than 1,450 companies in areas such as management, client services and systems for dealing with labor law violations, it said on Thursday. The brokerage firms’ performance last year is to be graded on a 100-point scale: A (90 or above), B (70 to 89) or C (under 70). Those seeking to hire workers through a broker could find the results on the ministry’s Web site from Oct. 31. In a mock referendum held by the Migrants Empowerment Network in Taiwan, 12,684 votes were cast in favor of abolishing the migrant labor brokerage system, while 95 votes were cast against abolishing it. Many migrant workers have complained that Taiwanese brokers charge too much and do not provide adequate services.
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,