New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) yesterday said that he would ask borough wardens not to travel overseas after one last week took a group of local residents on a trip to Europe that had been organized in December last year.
Hou told a news conference that he would strongly advise the city’s borough wardens against traveling abroad until quarantine measures are lifted, but “this is not an administrative order and I can only give moral advice.”
The city has 1,032 borough wardens and none of the others has plans to travel abroad, he said.
Photo: Tony Yao, Taipei Times
All large events in the city have been canceled, and small events can proceed only if the city authorities feels that they can be safely managed, and participants agree to wear masks and sanitize their hands, he said.
The central government should prohibit all Taiwanese from traveling to areas for which a level 3 travel alert has been issued, he said.
Taiwanese returning from countries with a level three warning should be screened thoroughly and a 14-day quarantine should be enforced, Hou said earlier during a New Taipei City meeting.
Lin Chi-fang (林綺芳), warden for Jhonghe District’s (中和) Wayao Borough left on Tuesday last week with a group of 14 borough residents for Spain and Portugal, a source said.
Speaking to reporters by telephone on Tuesday from Thailand, where she and the other travelers were transiting on their way home, Lin said that she was “sorry for creating a bad impression.”
She would report to the city’s public quarantine facilities upon her return, and would not apply for home-quarantine subsidies, she said.
Reporters who followed Lin after her arrival at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport later that day said she left the airport in a private vehicle and went home before reporting to a public quarantine facility on Tuesday night.
The 11-day tour had been organized in December last year, she said by telephone yesterday.
The tour group originally including 40 people, but most of them canceled and the 14 left did not want to lose half of the fees they paid by canceling the trip, she said.
They felt Spain and Portugal would be safe to travel to, as authorities had issued only a level 2 advisory for the two countries, she said.
However, she cut the trip short after learning that authorities had raised the advisory for both countries to level 3, Lin said.
She was not aware that members of the group planned to apply for quarantine subsidies, she said, adding that she hopes the public would not “misunderstand their intent or spread rumors.”
In related news, the Taipei City Government on Tuesday announced that all community events planned to take place before July would be canceled.
A source yesterday said that Wei Ya-yu (魏雅郁), borough warden for Zhishan Borough (芝山) in Shilin District (士林), left with a group of residents on Thursday last week for a trip to Sri Lanka.
Wei was defended by Shilin District Chief Chiang Ching-hui (江慶輝), who told reporters that she was on a personal trip with friends that she had paid for with her own money, and they had left before the city canceled community activities.
Wei’s group is expected to return home on Sunday.
Additional reporting by Lai Hsiao-tung and Shen Pei-yao
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