In addition to plans to restrict rice cultivation in drought-hit southern Taiwan, there is a need for special funding for dredging silt from some reservoirs in the area, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Hwang Jung-chiou (黃重球) said yesterday.
Hwang said the Water Resources Agency (WRA) has triggered its farming suspension mechanism in the Chiayi and Tainan areas because of the drought, and that the Taiwan Water Corp is planning to launch a program to encourage people to save water.
In the long run, silted-up reservoirs in the region need to be dredged and equipped with modern self-clearing facilities, he said.
WRA Deputy Director-General Hsieh Sheng-yen (謝勝彥) has warned that Zengwun Reservoir (曾文水庫) in Chiayi County “is slowly drying up” because of mudslides and landslides in its catchment area, as well as being inundated with huge amounts of driftwood after Typhoon Morakot in August.
WRA Director-General Yang Wei-fu (楊偉甫) said the reservoir’s water storage capacity was only 40 percent of its capacity and that the capacity declined greatly after Morakot.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
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