Extra money from a rise in airport fees that is to go to Taoyuan’s Dayuan District (大園) should go toward scholarships, long-term healthcare and medical subsidies, Dayuan officials said on Wednesday.
Landing fees at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport are to rise in 2021 after Taoyuan International Airport Corp in September 2017 introduced a flat rate. This led to a 40 percent increase in compensation funds, of which Dayuan receives a share.
The airport company said that in 2021, NT$323 million (US$10.5 million), or 73 percent of the total compensation package, would go to Dayuan, up NT$81 million from last year.
Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) has agreed to issue scholarship funds from next year for high-school and tertiary students, Democratic Progressive Party Taoyuan City Councilor Yu Wu-ho (游吾和) said.
The scholarships would total NT$12 million, which would come from an extra NT$27 million the district is expected to receive next year in addition to what it got this year, Yu said.
Funds for long-term care and people with severe diseases should be considered, as such policies would draw healthcare facilities to Dayuan, Yu said.
Subsidies for health checks could be boosted by NT$500, from the current NT$1,500, he said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taoyuan City Councilor Hsu Chi-wan (徐其萬) said that compensation funds last year were mostly used to subsidize health checks and school lunches, while additional funding would allow scholarships to be reinstated for high-school students.
Proceeds from fiscal 2018 would allow the airport company to distribute NT$480 million among districts near the airport, it said.
However, due to accounting cycles, compensation from 2018 would not be available until 2021, it said.
Landing fees are calculated according to tonnage and noise levels, with 0.13 percent going to local governments, Taoyuan Noise Pollution Prevention Division head Huang Po-hung (黃伯弘) said.
The money’s distribution is based on each borough’s population, with all 15 of Dayuan’s boroughs falling in a level 2 noise pollution zone, Huang said.
This means that the district receives 73 percent of the funds after 10 percent is deducted for administrative costs, Huang said.
The company paid NT$340 million, NT$359 million, NT$398 million and NT$479 million in compensation to the Taoyuan City Government from 2015 to 2018 to be distributed from 2018 to 2021, it said.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
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
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
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400