The nation will have sufficient electricity throughout this year, Premier William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday, adding that reactivation of the No. 2 reactor of the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) would not interfere with the Democratic Progressive Party’s promise to establish a “nuclear-free homeland.”
Lai made the remarks at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei in response to questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Yen-hsiu (李彥秀) on whether the nation is experiencing an electricity shortage.
While acknowledging that state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) has fallen slightly behind on its goal of achieving an energy reserve of 6 percent, he said the company’s power generation would undoubtedly be enough to cover this year’s consumption.
Asked why the Executive Yuan has requested that lawmakers sign a proposal to reactivate Guosheng’s No. 2 reactor, Lai said that as the reactor has just undergone annual maintenance, it is standard procedure for Taipower to tender a proposal to reactivate it.
The proposal should not be interpreted as the government backtracking on its pledge to create a nuclear-free homeland by 2025, he said later, in response to a question by People First Party Legislator Chou Chen Hsiu-hsia (周陳秀霞).
Asked by Lee about media reports that Taipower is poised to hike electricity prices next month, Lai said: “There is no need to speculate on this issue right now, so that misunderstanding can be avoided.”
The Bureau of Energy’s Electricity Pricing Review Committee would assess whether it is necessary to increase electricity prices, he said.
Lee called an amendment to the Air Pollution Act (空氣汙染防制法) proposed by the Cabinet the “sham of the century,” as Article 14 of the bill stipulates that there will be no ceiling to the amount of natural gas that can be used by power plants, which could generate air pollution different from that of coal-fired power plants.
She said Environmental Protection Administration Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) should heed his pledge to resign if he fails to reduce the number of days on which levels of PM2.5 — fine particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or less — trigger a “red alert” on the administration’s color-coded air quality index by 20 percent from the number recorded in 2015.
Despite the premier reiterating that the supply and price of toilet paper was stable, Lee said that Lai and President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) are “failing to win the public’s trust” when it comes to their ability to regulate product prices.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Ho Hsin-chun (何欣純) attributed media reports about electricity and toilet paper price hikes to politically motived people manipulating public sentiment.
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