The NT$100 charge for the issuance of a clear criminal record certificate is too high, an Yilan County resident surnamed Wang (王) said, calling it the “most expensive piece of A4 paper in history.”
The certificate is an A4-sized piece of paper with a stamp on it, Wang said, asking: “Why does that cost NT$100?”
“If you apply for a household certificate from the household registration office, which is also A4-sized, it only costs NT$15,” Wang said. “In comparison, the clear criminal record certificate is ridiculously overpriced.”
The certificates used to be requested mainly for immigration or study-abroad purposes, so there were not many applications.
However, after the New Party proposed excluding felons from running for office and requiring nominees to present clear criminal record certificates, many businesses began requiring that incoming employees provide the certificate, causing the number of requests to increase.
The county government previously issued an average of 3,000 to 4,000 certificates each year, with the majority of applicants being employees in the lottery or hotel industries, followed by foreign migrant workers.
However, that number increased to 5,758 last year, government data showed.
The first copy of the certificate costs NT$100 and a second copy costs NT$20, but only if requested on the same occasion.
The Foreign Affairs Division of the county government’s Police Bureau, which is the only agency in the county that processes such applications, said that each copy of the certificate used to cost NT$250.
The charges are set by the central government, which maintains the right to decide whether the fee is lowered or raised, it said, adding that the bureau has not received any complaints about the charge.
According to government regulations, offices have two-and-a-half business days to issue clear criminal record certificates, the division said.
Yilan County is the only place in the country that issues the certificate immediately if the applicant has no criminal record and saves people the trouble of returning to the office, it said.
The certificate might only be a page or two if the applicant has no criminal record, the Ministry of the Interior’s National Police Agency said.
However, for applicants with an extensive criminal record, the labor cost of confirming the record with judicial and law enforcement agencies is higher, it said, adding that the fee was set with these considerations in mind.
These types of fees are approved by the ministry and the Ministry of Finance, but are regularly reassessed according to the price index and other indicators, it added.
Additional reporting by Cheng Hung-ta
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