Lawmakers across party lines proposed to allocate a portion of the fines imposed on Chinese vessels found trespassing in Taiwanese waters to the Coast Guard Administration (CGA), as part of efforts to boost the morale of officials at the agency.
Amid increasing incidents of Chinese vessels fishing and mining sand in the nation’s territorial waters, the lawmakers proposed amending the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例) and redirect such funds to the CGA to cover operational costs and performance bonuses.
The proposal was made by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators Yang Yao (楊曜) and Liu Chien-kuo (劉建國), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Chen Hsuen-sheng (陳雪生) and Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍), and Independent Legislator Chao Cheng-yu (趙正宇).
Photo courtesy of the Coast Guard Administration’s Penghu Branch
The number of vessels intercepted by the CGA over the past three years totaled 3,803, including 290 ships seized and 81 confiscated, the lawmakers said.
A total of 194 ships were fined during the period, with fines totaling NT$193.2 million (US$6.69 million at the current rate), it added.
All of the funds were directed to the public treasury per the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法), the proposal said, adding that the CGA should also profit.
The budget allocated to the agency to patrol the nation’s territorial waters was NT$5.52 million from 2018 to last year, while the agency spent NT$5.86 million, the proposal said.
Article 80 of the allocation act should be amended to redirect part of the fines to agency, to partly cover the costs of its patrol missions, the proposal said.
The coast guard’s tasks are energy-consuming and dangerous, as it often has to deal with strong opposition from the crew on board the vessels found trespassing, the lawmakers said, adding that the amendment would also improve the agency’s human-resources situation.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching