More than 800 people in Taipei on Tuesday sat the first in a series of exams to gain a commercial driver’s license for non-traditional taxis.
About half of the people who took the exam for ride-hailing service Uber Taiwan, the local subsidiary of Uber Technologies, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said.
The exam is part of a multipurpose taxi service program initiated by the government primarily to encourage Uber and other non-traditional taxi services to adhere to regulations, the ministry said.
Photo: CNA
A multipurpose taxi service is defined as one in which the driver is not legally required to use a yellow taxi. The fares are metered, but passengers must contact the drivers via an app.
Tests are to be held through September in the six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu City, to bring Taiwan’s approximately 10,000 Uber drivers under the banner of multipurpose taxi drivers, so they would not be in breach of amendments to the Transportation Management Regulations (汽車運輸業管理規則), the ministry said.
The amendments, which took effect on June 6, ban Uber from offering taxi services through business partnerships with local car rental operators.
After a four-month grace period that ends in October, those in breach of the rules would face fines of NT$9,000 to NT$90,000, the ministry said.
The regulations were revised after Uber was found to be offering taxi services through partnerships with rental companies, a practice that the ministry said was severely disrupting the market.
The regulations require Uber to charge customers a minimum of one hour rental, regardless of the distance.
Uber has said that the rules limit customer choice, harm competition, and deprive drivers and rental companies of business opportunities.
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:
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater