Business travelers should not have to quarantine for seven days after an overseas trip as the nation has been easing quarantine requirements for people infected with COVID-19, New Power Party (NPP) Legislator Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智) said yesterday.
Business travelers are presently required to quarantine for seven days and practice self-health management for another seven days, the same as for other arrivals.
The NPP has proposed that business travelers should only be required to practice self-health management for seven days.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
The party yesterday set up a hotline for business travelers to voice what they need.
Chiu invited an entrepreneur surnamed Lee (李) to the news conference to share his experience.
“My firm did not get a questionnaire from the Bureau of Foreign Trade asking for our opinion on the proposed quarantine change until Tuesday,” Lee said. “Prior to Tuesday, there was no formal communication of any kind.”
Lee said he talked to a business association many times about the issue, but was told that he could not win a fight with the government.
Lee said he found it outrageous that officials would implement a major change in quarantine policy without asking businesspeople first.
“Nobody wants to contract COVID-19, but we have to travel for business,” he said.
“The government treats business travelers returning from overseas like they have contracted COVID-19 and requires them to quarantine, which is an outright humiliation to entrepreneurs,” Lee added.
The least the government could do is let entrepreneurs voice their opinion, he said.
“I traveled overseas 24 times in 2019. Over the past two years, I have complied with the government policy, reducing my overseas trips to eight, which meant that I quarantined for a total of two months. It messed up my life and my job,” he said.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs is “clueless” about most businesspeople’s complaints, Chiu said, adding that Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) did not discuss easing the quarantine requirements for business travelers with the ministry until Saturday last week.
“This shows that the government has not been regularly reviewing its policy on business travel and updating it accordingly,” Chiu said. “The border controls are presently the same for all arrivals. There is no difference between border controls for Taiwanese and foreigners — it’s not fair.”
The NPP recommended that the government exempt “low-risk, high-demand inbound travelers” from the quarantine requirements, including Taiwanese living abroad and businesspeople traveling for Taiwanese companies.
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
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
RSS