Starting in July, the Kaohsiung City Government is to require that all newly constructed buildings reserve space for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, Kaohsiung City Public Works Bureau Director Yang Chin-fu (楊欽富) said yesterday.
The policy is to be implemented following changes to the Kaohsiung Building Management Ordinance (高雄市建築管理自治條例).
Yang made the announcement in response to New Power Party (NPP) Kaohsiung City Councilor Lin Yu-kai’s (林于凱) questions regarding the city government’s policies on electric vehicles.
Switching to electric vehicles is an international trend, which the central government has noted and embraced, Lin said, citing the Executive Yuan’s policy to only allow the sales of electric scooters by 2035 and electric cars by 2040.
Despite the government’s promotion of the policy, people who have purchased electric vehicles face difficulties, primarily in setting up charging stations in the parking lots of their apartment buildings, he said.
Under current laws, the installation of electric vehicle charging stations in apartment buildings mandate that the individual obtain the approval of the building’s management committee, Lin said.
However, committees are likely to refuse such requests due to concerns over the possible negative effects of charging station, due mostly to lack of understanding on how charging stations work, he said.
Local governments should inform management committees on the matter and answer their questions, he said, adding that the central government should also assist in installing charging stations.
Yang said that the Kaohsiung City Government is in talks with Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) on how to provide sufficient electricity to apartment buildings in the city once buildings start installing charging stations.
City officials and Taipower technicians would visit buildings and assess how many charging stations can be set up at each building, depending on the building’s access to the power grid, he said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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