A free travel application aims to help migrant workers from Southeast Asia explore scenic spots around Taiwan and inform them about cultural activities, the organization that developed it said yesterday.
The QTaiwan app, launched last month by the Global Workers’ Organization, Taiwan, offers information about 58 popular scenic spots around Taiwan in English, Chinese, Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese.
Users can also listen to audio tours in their own language and check the latest cultural events in their cities, organization head Karen Hsu (徐瑞希) said.
“We developed this app because we discovered that many migrant factory workers have been getting more time off since the start of this year due to the amended workweek rule,” Hsu said.
“They have nowhere to go, but our experience tells us that if we provide them with information, they are very capable of arranging their own holiday schedules,” she said.
Hsu said the organization would continue to expand and update the app and is working with travel agencies to provide one-day package tours for migrant workers.
However, when users link to travel agencies’ Web sites through the app, they will find that many of them are exclusively in Chinese and English, scaring away travelers from Southeast Asian countries, she said, urging travel agencies translate travel information into Southeast Asian languages.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
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PROXIMITY: Prague is closer to Dresden than Berlin is, so Taiwanese firms are expected to take advantage of the Czech capital’s location, the Executive Yuan official said Taiwan plans to boost cooperation with the Czech Republic in semiconductor development due to Prague’s pivotal role in the European IC industry, Executive Yuan Secretary-General Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said. With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) building a wafer fab in the German city of Dresden, a Germany-Czech Republic-Poland “silicon triangle” is forming, Kung said in a media interview on the weekend after returning from a visit to Prague. “Prague is closer to Dresden than Berlin is, so Taiwanese firms are expected to take advantage of the Czech capital’s location,” he said. “Taiwan and Prague have already launched direct flights and it is
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