Taipei Rapid Transit Corp on Thursday said it has adopted a zero violence policy against its employees, adding that any verbal or physical violence against them would be reported to the police.
The operator of the MRT railway serving metropolitan Taipei said that after COVID-19 curbs were eased, the number of violent incidents against its personnel increased along with passenger numbers.
From the beginning of the year until Thursday, there had been 10 incidents involving verbal harassment or threats against its employees, the company said.
Photo: CNA
Most of the incidents occurred when station personnel asked MRT passengers to abide by the rules or involved drunk passengers, it said.
One incident involved a drunk person who entered a station without a mask before the mask requirement was eased on April 17, it said.
Station personnel asked the person to put on a mask, but the person refused, insulted staff and injured them, the company said.
They were escorted out of the station by MRT and local police, the company said, adding that the injured staff filed a complaint about the drunk person with police.
Station staff are obligated to remind passengers to abide by the regulations, the company said, urging passengers not to overreact when they are addressed by staff.
The company said that if people act irrationally, issue verbal threats or become violent, it reserves the right to refuse service to them.
Any such act would be reported to MRT police and local police, it said.
Station staff could respond to violence by spraying the aggressor with aerosol self-defense sprays, while MRT information desks are equipped with batons and shields, it said.
The company said it holds regular training sessions for all station staff to ensure they have a basic understanding of self-defense techniques.
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
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS