Stalls offering ready-to-eat food or beverages and free food samples would be banned at this year’s Lunar New Year market on Dihua Street (迪化街) in Taipei’s Datong District (大同) as part of the city’s COVID-19 prevention efforts, the Taipei City Government said yesterday.
It would be the first time that the stalls would be banned at the annual market.
The market usually opens two weeks before the Lunar New Year, offering customers foodstuffs and snacks for the holiday. This year’s market is to open on Jan. 28 and run through Feb. 10.
Photo: Yang Hsin-hui, Taipei Times
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) on Tuesday reported that the Taipei health and environmental protection departments as well as the Office of Commerce on Monday last week held a session at Dihua Street to explain the disease prevention measures.
Food vendors who have already rented stalls are upset by the policy, while a local storeowner said that sales might drop 10 to 20 percent, the report said.
Taipei City Office of Commerce Director Kao Chen-yuan (高振源) yesterday said the city government at the explanation session said that new ready-to-eat food or drink stalls cannot be set up and food samples cannot be offered, while visitors to the market must wear masks.
Existing ready-to-eat food or drink stores would not be affected by the policy, but setting up temporary stalls would be prohibited, he said.
While some vendors have expressed different opinions, most of them are willing to cooperate with the city’s COVID-19 prevention measures, Kao said.
The city government would dispatch personnel to some of the street’s main intersections to remind visitors to wear masks, he said.
The office would also help print posters to inform visitors that food samples would not be offered, he added.
Asked whether crowd control measures would be implemented, Kao said that people at the market usually shop freely at different stalls and the venue is not a confined indoor environment, so the office does not have such plans yet.
The office would follow the Central Epidemic Command Center’s instructions and make changes if needed, he added.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS