Three Control Yuan members are investigating whether Taoyuan authorities were negligent in their handling of alleged child abuse at a skilled care facility, including one incident that resulted in the death of a five-year-old boy.
The family of the boy, surnamed Fang (方), said caregivers at the facility in January allegedly “rocked his head forcefully and wrapped tape around his neck, causing the boy to roll on the floor while crying for help,” Control Yuan members Wang Yu-ling (王幼玲), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Chang Chu-fang (張菊芳) said in a statement yesterday.
The boy, who had autism, “bit his fingers and hit his head for 20 minutes, but the facility’s staff turned a blind eye to this,” the statement said.
Photo: CNA
After the boy returned home that afternoon, his family noticed there was something wrong with him and took him to a hospital, where he died the following day, the statement said.
In another incident that occurred at the facility in June, a six-year-old girl diagnosed with autism was allegedly strapped to a chair while she was having an epileptic episode and was not taken to a hospital until more than an hour later, the statement said.
The alleged delay in hospitalization was likely the reason she fell into a coma and sustained permanent brain damage, it said.
The facility staff has also been accused of feeding two residents improperly, including by sitting on the back of one of them to pin him down in one instance, it said.
The Control Yuan members said they were trying to ascertain what actions the Taoyuan Department of Social Welfare took after it received a complaint from Fang’s family, such as demanding an improvement or handing out a punishment.
They are also trying to determine whether the department was negligent in its investigation and handling of alleged child abuse cases, including its supervision of caregivers at skilled care facilities.
The Control Yuan is responsible for investigating and disciplining public servants and agencies.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the