Eleven food and food delivery companies have agreed not to ask their couriers to work on days when work is canceled due to typhoons or other natural disasters, the Ministry of Labor said on Friday.
Foodpanda, Uber Eats, Lalamove, Foodomo, Deliveroo, YoWoo Food Delivery, McDonald’s Taiwan, Pizza Hut, KFC, Napoli Pizza and Domino’s Pizza agreed to the safety guidelines, the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said that it also urged companies to take all steps possible to ensure the safety of their delivery staff, such as providing them with high-visibility vests and helmets, as well as giving them safety training.
Some companies engage independent contractors — not employees — to deliver food, which some have said falls outside the scope of safety and health regulations, but companies must comply with the provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (職業安全衛生法), Occupational Safety Division head Lee Wen-chin (李文進) said.
According to Article 51 of the act, individuals engaged in work directed by a company supervisor are covered as much by safety and health regulations as the company’s own employees, Lee said.
Companies face a maximum fine of NT$300,000 for occupational injuries resulting from a breach of the regulations, he said.
Non-legally binding guidelines for the safety of food couriers would be introduced soon and would likely include a clause that they are not required to work on typhoon days off to reduce the number of traffic accidents involving delivery staff, the ministry said.
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
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
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