Despite a surge in local COVID-19 cases, railway passengers can still eat and drink onboard, Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) said yesterday.
Wang was responding to questions on whether food and beverage consumption would be prohibited on Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) and Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) trains, as COVID-19 infections have risen dramatically since the beginning of this month.
Wang said the ministry has no plans to reimpose a ban.
Photo: CNA
“Railway passengers should still be allowed to eat and drink onboard as long as they observe disease prevention guidelines. Otherwise, people on four-and-a-half-hour or longer trips would be starving,” he said.
In other news, Wang denied that the TRA and THSRC would soon raise fares.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications last week approved THSRC’s proposal to raise the basic rate from NT$4.134 per passenger-kilometer (pkm) to NT$4.313 per pkm.
The adjustment, which was made in response to the rise in Taiwan’s consumer price index, would raise one-way fare from Taipei to Kaohsiung from NT$1,490 to NT$1,630.
Local Chinese-language media have reported that the TRA would follow suit, with the price for a one-way ticket from Taipei to Kaohsiung costing more than NT$1,000.
“THSRC is a publicly listed firm, and we will respect its board of directors’ decision. If the board votes to raise ticket prices, the pricing scheme would still have to be approved by the transport ministry, which holds 43 percent of the company’s shares,” Wang said.
There had been instances in which the board voted against a price hike, although the ministry had approved a basic rate hike.
Wang told a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee that he would ask the board directors representing the ministry to not support the plan to increase fares.
“The focus of the TRA’s reform is to enhance safety and service punctuality. Unless the TRA substantially improves on both fronts, we will not talk about plans to raise fares,” he said.
TRA Director-General Du Wei (杜微) said the agency has tasked a consulting firm to stipulate a new formula for calculating ticket prices, but it does not plan to raise fares at the moment.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS