The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday announced a series of new measures to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of its emergency assistance to overseas Taiwanese, as more than 90 percent of callers who contacted the nation’s emergency hotlines last year were not actually in serious trouble.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Secretary-General James Lee (李光章) at a news conference in Taipei said that to prevent the nation’s emergency hotlines from being abused for trivial matters, the ministry has revised its guidelines governing emergency assistance to Taiwanese traveling overseas to give the public a clearer idea of what kinds of situations constitute an emergency.
The guidelines previously stipulated that overseas offices were required to help victims of criminal activities report their case to a local police bureau. However, under the revised version, assistance would only be provided to those who have encountered serious crimes that threaten their personal safety, such as murder, kidnapping and sexual assault, Lee said.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
“In the past, Taiwanese tourists traveling overseas might have called the emergency hotline in the middle of the night simply because they had lost a US$100 bill. The public should realize that inconvenience does not equal emergency,” he said.
Citing as an example the emergency call center set up by the ministry’s branch office at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, Lee said the center received more than 65,000 calls asking for help, but only 700 of them could be categorized as an emergency.
The new guidelines also include two new scenarios that are entitled to emergency assistance — where a Taiwanese who is arrested and detained by a foreign government requests a visit by local consular staff, and in the event of a natural disaster, war or civil war, consular staff are required to provide necessary emergency response information and assistance, Lee said.
The revision is part of 12 new measures rolled out by the ministry yesterday, weeks after Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) pledged to reform the nation’s emergency response mechanism after the branch office in Osaka, Japan, came under fire for its dismissal of a Taiwanese tourist’s request for help finding accommodation while stranded in the area due to Typhoon Jebi.
The incident reportedly led to office director-general Su Chii-cherng (蘇啟誠) committing suicide on Sept. 14.
To ensure better handing of controversial situations, the ministry is to set up an ad hoc evaluation committee consisting of respected individuals from different sectors of society to fairly and justly evaluate a major complaint, Lee said.
Lee said another major change is that the call center at Taoyuan airport has been turned into a main dispatch center, which would help those in need contact the responsible local consular office and assign each request with a case number for follow-ups.
“From now on, Taiwanese needing emergency assistance abroad are encouraged to contact the call center on 0800-085-095,” Lee said, adding that each overseas office’s emergency hotline service would also remain available.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not