Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) yesterday said that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications should within one week submit a report on how to deter people on tourist visas from overstaying.
Yeh made the remarks at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee after the Tourism Bureau on Tuesday said that 152 of 153 Vietnamese passport holders went missing soon after they arrived in Kaohsiung on tours last week. It later revised the number of those missing to 148 and 11 of those had been found as of yesterday.
The incident has triggered calls for the government to revisit the Kuan Hung Pilot Project, an electronic visa program launched in 2015 to boost the number of “quality tour groups” visiting from India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and India — nations named in the government’s New Southbound Policy.
The government only began to sense that it was a serious matter after last week’s incident, Yeh said.
However, prior to last week, 348 Vietnamese had overstayed while visiting on tourist visas this year, she said.
The project does not require the government to check entry and exit records, nor do visitors who arrive as part of the program need to present financial statements, Yeh said, adding that the government did not seem to care whether they had purchased return tickets before it granted them visas.
“The government has practically opened the door wide open, but it punished travel agencies instead of the missing tourists,” Yeh said, adding that the government’s error was greater than that of the travel agencies.
Yeh denied a ministry request to have one month to hand in a report on the incident, which would include measures to prevent similar situations.
Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chi Wen-chung (祁文中) said that the bureau, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Immigration Agency would study the problem and find ways to address them.
Nevertheless, Minister Without Portfolio Chang Ching-sen (張景森), who is supervising tourism affairs, said on Facebook that runaway tourists were as inevitable as people dropping a few sesame seeds on the floor when they eat Chinese flatbread for breakfast.
In the past few years, about 226,000 visitors from Southeast Asian nations have visited Taiwan through the program, but only 414 contravened the regulations, “but Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] lawmakers and the media in the past few days have pummeled the government for implementing the New Southbound Policy, as if the Kuan Hung Pilot Project has filled the streets with fugitives and hookers,” Chang said.
The government needs to revisit how it grants visas to Southeast Asian visitors, he said, adding that it would not shrink from enforcing a policy that would reduce the nation’s reliance on Chinese tourists.
Three batches of banana sauce imported from the Philippines were intercepted at the border after they were found to contain the banned industrial dye Orange G, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday. From today through Sept. 2 next year, all seasoning sauces from the Philippines are to be subject to the FDA’s strictest border inspection, meaning 100 percent testing for illegal dyes before entry is allowed, it said in a statement. Orange G is an industrial coloring agent that is not permitted for food use in Taiwan or internationally, said Cheng Wei-chih (鄭維智), head of the FDA’s Northern Center for
The Chinese military has built landing bridge ships designed to expand its amphibious options for a potential assault on Taiwan, but their combat effectiveness is limited due to their high vulnerability, a defense expert said in an analysis published on Monday. Shen Ming-shih (沈明室), a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said that the deployment of such vessels as part of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s East Sea Fleet signals a strong focus on Taiwan. However, the ships are highly vulnerable to precision strikes, which means they could be destroyed before they achieve their intended
About 4.2 million tourist arrivals were recorded in the first half of this year, a 10 percent increase from the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. The growth continues to be consistent, with the fourth quarter of this year expected to be the peak in Taiwan, the agency said, adding that it plans to promote Taiwan overseas via partnerships and major events. From January to June, 9.14 million international departures were recorded from Taiwan, an 11 percent increase from the same period last year, with 3.3 million headed for Japan, 1.52 million for China and 832,962 to South Korea,
REWRITING HISTORY: China has been advocating a ‘correct’ interpretation of the victory over Japan that brings the CCP’s contributions to the forefront, an expert said An elderly Chinese war veteran’s shin still bears the mark of a bullet wound he sustained when fighting the Japanese as a teenager, a year before the end of World War II. Eighty years on, Li Jinshui’s scar remains as testimony to the bravery of Chinese troops in a conflict that killed millions of their people. However, the story behind China’s overthrow of the brutal Japanese occupation is deeply contested. Historians broadly agree that credit for victory lies primarily with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-led Republic of China (ROC) Army. Its leader, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a
RSS