An international training base for surfers could be completed before October at Jhongjiao Bay (中角彎) in New Taipei City’s Jinshan District (金山), Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday.
Lin made the remarks before inspecting the bay with New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) and Cabinet officials.
Establishing a surfers’ training base in Jhongjiao Bay was among Premier Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) campaign promises when he became commissioner of the former Taipei County, before it was renamed New Taipei City and became a special municipality.
Photo: Yu Chao-fu, Taipei Times
Hou brought the plan up again at a Cabinet meeting on Jan. 17, after he took office on Dec. 25 last year.
Su would help Hou realize his plan for the bay, Lin said, adding that it is an example of municipalities and the Cabinet sharing a common goal.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications was put in charge of the project two days after the Cabinet meeting ended, he said, adding that a development plan was submitted to the Executive Yuan following multiple meetings with officials from the Ministry of Education, Council of Agriculture and New Taipei City Government over the past month-and-a-half.
“We hope people can see an international training base for surfers here in October this year, including a visitor center and infrastructure improvements in the area,” Lin said.
Jhongjiao Elementary School is to host a training center that prepares the national team for international competitions, but which would welcome surfing enthusiasts as well, he said.
The government has budgeted NT$15 million (US$487,409) per year to fund the national training centers’ operations, Lin said.
The visitor center would help visitors who are not surfers navigate the scenic attractions on the north coast, he said.
The Forestry Bureau would need to release land designated for forest conservation so that the Tourism Bureau can build a parking lot to accommodate more tourists, he said.
Meanwhile, the municipality is to build new roads to the bay, which requires the expropriation of civilian properties, Lin said.
The roads are to connect to Provincial Highway No. 2, as well as bike lanes in Wanli (萬里) and Jinshan districts, creating a “tourism corridor,” he added.
Surfing is among the disciplines at next year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics, as well as in Paris in 2024 and Los Angeles in 2028, Chinese Taipei Surfing Association chairman Yu Ming-chin (余明錦) said.
He thanked officials for their support and expressed the hope that Taiwan would one day win a gold medal in the sport.
In other developments, Lin defended the transport ministry’s proposal to subsidize Taiwanese travelers during the spring season, following criticism that the Cabinet is squandering taxpayers’ money.
The government spent NT$2.1 billion subsidizing domestic travelers during the winter, which helped generate an “output value” of NT$11.5 billion and raised hotel occupancy rates by 20 to 30 percent, Lin said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS