Contractors building Terminal 3 at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport should make sure that foreign workers they hire for the project receive at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine in their home countries before arriving in Taiwan, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said last week.
A team formed by South Korea’s Samsung C&T Corp and Taiwan’s RSEA Engineering Corp won the tender for the project.
For the construction, which began last month, the companies applied to hire about 2,200 workers from the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, with the first group of 400 to 500 workers scheduled to arrive by the end of this year.
As a COVID-19 cluster infection was detected at a foreign workers’ dormitory at King Yuan Electronics in Hsinchu last month, the ministry last week held a meeting with Samsung and RSEA to address issues that might arise from the management of foreign workers in the project.
“COVID-19 outbreaks among foreign construction workers would cause severe delays to the nation’s major infrastructure project, which in turn would expose the contractors to greater business risks,” Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chi Wen-chung (祁文中) said.
“We have advised the construction team to have all of its foreign workers inoculated with vaccines recognized by the international community. If they [foreign workers] have trouble getting two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, they should at least get the first dose,” Chi said.
Construction teams should adopt high disease-prevention standards to prevent an outbreak at worker dormitories, Chi said, adding that the ministry would meet with the Central Epidemic Command Center to discuss health guidelines that should be used to regulate foreign workers.
Taiwan International Airport Corp said that it is reviewing construction plans submitted by the contractors and it is building dormitories for foreign workers, adding that on-site construction of the terminal would start before the end of this year or at the beginning of next year.
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
A BETRAYAL? It is none of the ministry’s business if those entertainers love China, but ‘you cannot agree to wipe out your own country,’ the MAC minister said Taiwanese entertainers in China would have their Taiwanese citizenship revoked if they are holding Chinese citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. Several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑) and Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜), earlier this month on their Weibo (微博) accounts shared a picture saying that Taiwan would be “returned” to China, with tags such as “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Adhere to the ‘one China’ principle.” The MAC would investigate whether those Taiwanese entertainers have Chinese IDs and added that it would revoke their Taiwanese citizenship if they did, Chiu told the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister paper
RSS