Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) yesterday returned to Taiwan from a four-day visit to Singapore and said his visit helped improve Taipei’s administration.
Chiang made his first foreign visit as Taipei Mayor to Singapore on Wednesday, and returned to Taiwan yesterday morning.
At the airport upon arrival, he said the visit went very smoothly and the delegation learned a lot from it, including the design of the indoor vertical forest inside the terminal shopping mall in Jewel Changi Airport, and Singaporean Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment’s Singapore Green Plan 2030.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
They also visited the Singaporean Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and the Housing and Development Board (HDB), and learned about the country’s long-term plan and implementation of its Home Ownership Scheme, as well as visited the Land Transport Authority (LTA) to learn about Singapore’s plans for autonomous vehicles and traffic designs for reducing accidents by elderly drivers, he said.
Chiang said he was impressed by the Singaporean government’s strong planning ability, cross-ministerial cooperation and determined execution ability, and that there are many elements that Taipei can reference and use to improve its administration.
However, a city councilor questioned whether Chiang was engaged in secret diplomacy, and said he should explain to the public where he went and who he met with during the visit.
Democratic Progressive Party Taipei City Councilor Chen E-jun (陳怡君), who joined the delegation on the Singapore visit, said Chiang had “disappeared” three times during the four-day visit.
She asked why the mayor was not present during a planned dinner on the first day, a visit to a garden in the morning of the third day and arrived late to a lunch meeting on the third day, and asked whether he was engaged in secret diplomacy.
Chiang yesterday said he is very grateful for the Singaporean government’s careful arrangements and hospitality, and that “a guest should suit the convenience of the host” and the Singapore side was very welcoming, adding he was able to see many old friends and meet many new ones.
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