The government has for too long ignored civil defense, and needs to address the matter with greater urgency, legislators and military experts said.
Most Taiwanese have little awareness of the civil defense system, even though it has been in place since Japanese colonial rule from 1895 to 1945.
After the Republic of China government relocated to Taiwan following the Chinese Civil War, it established the Taiwan Province Air Defense Command, which was in charge of air raid defense and evacuation missions.
Photo: CNA
After 1949, the command became the Taiwan Province Civil Defense Command, and civil defense subunits were set up across the nation.
In 1973, the Ministry of National Defense was put in charge of all defense missions and the Ministry of the Interior in charge of civil defense, with the latter’s National Policy Agency responsible for supervising the civil defense operations.
Last year, Taiwan, a country of 21.25 million people, had more than 420,000 people in civil defense units.
According to the Civil Defense Act (民防法), the all-volunteer civil defense units are organized at four levels — city and county (the main units); district and township; state-run companies; and large companies, factories and schools.
Their main tasks are to maintain “local social order and assist in rescue operations of serious disasters during peacetime,” and handle “air defense evacuation and shelter, and in supporting military tasks” during wartime, the act says.
How active any of these units are is open to question, but given their many responsibilities and support roles, they are supposed to undergo rigid training, provided by the Ministry of the Interior and local governments.
Legislators say that is not the case.
A review by the Taiwan Statebuilding Party in September last year found that only a small amount of the funding allocated by local governments for civil defense purposes is devoted to training.
Of the NT$24.68 million (US$812,697 at the current exchange rate) Taipei allocated for civil defense annually from 2020 to last year, only NT$1.02 million, or 4 percent, went to training volunteers, with the rest going to social activities, such as year-end banquets and special gatherings, Taiwan Statebuilding Party Taipei chapter head Wu Hsin-tai (吳欣岱) said.
Taichung, Kaohsiung and Yilan County used only 2 percent, 10 percent and 13 percent respectively of their civil defense budgets for training, the review found.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Ching-yi (林靜儀) said that “the more we look into our civil defense preparedness the less we feel confident of the readiness of Taiwanese.”
Chang Li-ming (張離明), who heads the Taiwan Nation Security Institute’s civil defense project, said that the civil defense system was being held back by more than a lack of training.
It is facing systematic failure, he said.
The central government does not have a standard for the number of civil defense personnel each county or city should have, and instead leaves it up to local governments, he said.
Taipei and New Taipei City have 7,000 and 9,000 volunteers listed in their respective civil defense units, while Taoyuan, which covers four times the area of Taipei, has only 2,500 people, as its allocates less money for the purpose, he said.
Another problem is that applicants to civil defense units can join simply through an interview arranged by recommendation instead of having to undergo a standardized screening process, Chang said.
That results in civil defense units that are built on “human relationships, without proper evaluations and evaluation mechanisms.”
Civil defense units also lack concrete missions, with the Civil Defense Act and the Ministry of the Interior’s Civil Defense Mobilization Guidelines (民防人力動員計畫) offering little guidance other than saying that they are to support the military in wartime and help people cope with disasters in peacetime.
Chang urged the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of the Interior to amend the guidelines to clearly define the job of each city and county civil defense force, including their size and their responsibilities in wartime, so that local governments can draft their own civil defense training and management plans.
He also proposed that Taiwan adopt a program like the US Department of Homeland Security’s Community Emergency Response Team, a nationally supported, locally implemented initiative that teaches people how to better prepare for hazards that might affect their communities.
The Ministry of Education (MOE) is to launch a new program to encourage international students to stay in Taiwan and explore job opportunities here after graduation, Deputy Minister of Education Yeh Ping-cheng (葉丙成) said on Friday. The government would provide full scholarships for international students to further their studies for two years in Taiwan, so those who want to pursue a master’s degree can consider applying for the program, he said. The fields included are science, technology, engineering, mathematics, semiconductors and finance, Yeh added. The program, called “Intense 2+2,” would also assist international students who completed the two years of further studies in
Former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) departed for Europe on Friday night, with planned stops in Lithuania and Denmark. Tsai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport on Friday night, but did not speak to reporters before departing. Tsai wrote on social media later that the purpose of the trip was to reaffirm the commitment of Taiwanese to working with democratic allies to promote regional security and stability, upholding freedom and democracy, and defending their homeland. She also expressed hope that through joint efforts, Taiwan and Europe would continue to be partners building up economic resilience on the global stage. The former president was to first
Former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Monday called for greater cooperation between Taiwan, Lithuania and the EU to counter threats to information security, including attacks on undersea cables and other critical infrastructure. In a speech at Vilnius University in the Lithuanian capital, Tsai highlighted recent incidents in which vital undersea cables — essential for cross-border data transmission — were severed in the Taiwan Strait and the Baltic Sea over the past year. Taiwanese authorities suspect Chinese sabotage in the incidents near Taiwan’s waters, while EU leaders have said Russia is the likely culprit behind similar breaches in the Baltic. “Taiwan and our European
The Taipei District Court sentenced babysitters Liu Tsai-hsuan (劉彩萱) and Liu Jou-lin (劉若琳) to life and 18 years in prison respectively today for causing the death of a one-year-old boy in December 2023. The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said that Liu Tsai-hsuan was entrusted with the care of a one-year-old boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), in August 2023 by the Child Welfare League Foundation. From Sept. 1 to Dec. 23 that year, she and her sister Liu Jou-lin allegedly committed acts of abuse against the boy, who was rushed to the hospital with severe injuries on Dec. 24, 2023, but did not