A second survey released yesterday by the Taipei City Government on the construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant showed that 66 percent of the city’s residents said they would come out and vote if a national referendum on the fate of the plant was held, a slight drop from the 71 percent who said they would do so in the first survey released last month.
The survey, conducted by Taipei City’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission on April 22 and April 23 with 1,302 respondents, also showed that 62 percent said they would vote in support of suspending construction of the plant, which also dropped from 66 percent in the previous survey.
The survey this month also included a new question, on whether the national referendum should be canceled if the majority of the public supported the suspension of the plant’s construction.
The result showed that 55 percent agreed with the proposal, while 32 percent said the referendum should still be held.
The city government has promised to conduct and release such poll every month as part of its efforts to strengthen the rhetoric of Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin’s (郝龍斌) open opposition to the construction of the plant.
Taipei Deputy Mayor Timothy Ting (丁庭宇), in announcing the results of the second survey, said the city poll reflected a shift in public attention as other issues emerged as hot topics in the media, such as the H7N9 avian influenza.
The nuclear issue is likely to become the center of attention again about one month before the national referendum is held, he said.
“The survey showed that more than half of Taiwanese continued to support the suspension of the plant’s construction. There are actually other options for the issue, such as proceeding with the construction without allowing its commercial operation, and we may add such a question in the poll to see what people think,” he said.
Ting stressed that his comments on continuing construction of the power plant but not allowing its commercial operation was his personal opinion, and did not affect Hau’s opposition to the construction.
The power plant has cost NT$28 billion (US$947.4 million) so far, and the money would be wasted if construction is halted, he said.
It is also an option to complete the construction first, and decide whether to allow its commercial operation when the first and second nuclear power plants are decommissioned, he said.
Taipei City Government spokesman Chang Chi-chiang (張其強) said the mayor, who did not attend the press conference, had no comment on Ting’s remarks.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS