The Taipei City Government yesterday announced it would issue NT$5,000 in food vouchers to 10,000 families starting in March in an effort to give prompt aid to people suffering due to the recent economic slowdown.
The food vouchers will be given to low-income or unemployed families not included in the city’s social welfare assistance system. Local borough chiefs and social workers will be responsible for visiting and selecting eligible local households, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said yesterday at a press conference at Taipei City Hall.
Those who receive the vouchers can use them to purchase food and other products at FamilyMart stores around the nation. The vouchers cannot be used to purchase cigarettes or alcohol.
Hau said many households faced sudden economic difficulties because of the global financial crisis during this past year, and the food voucher would help take care of these families.
“The city government understands the people’s pain, and the criteria used to determine the eligible households will not be too strict because it is our goal to help those in need,” he said.
Low-income families and homeless people already in the city’s social care system and receiving municipal subsidies from Taipei City’s Department of Social Welfare would not be eligible for the program, commissioner of the department Shih Yu-ling (師豫玲) said.
The program has a budget of NT$45 million, but Hau said the city government would appropriate more funds and send out more food vouchers to others in need.
Huang Lu Ching-ru (黃呂錦茹), commissioner of Taipei City’s Department of Civil Affairs, said the convenience store chain FamilyMart was selected to handle the vouchers because it was one of the contractors authorized by the central government, and the company was willing to provide discounts.
The Taipei City Government’s food vouchers came in the wake of a similar program implemented by the Kaohsiung City Government earlier this month. The Kaohsiung City Government issued a monthly NT$1,500 food voucher to 300 low-income families starting this month.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
RSS