Additional funding sources would be considered for a free psychiatric counseling program, Minister of Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) said on Tuesday, as appointments in Taipei and Taichung filled up in a matter of weeks.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare this month began offering three free counseling sessions to people aged between 15 and 30, expected to benefit 6,000 people.
Since it launched on Aug. 1, appointments in Taipei and Taichung have already been filled, with New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Tainan and Kaohsiung close behind, Chinese-language media have reported.
Photo: Chen Chia-yi, Taipei Times
The ministry was off with its initial estimate and would seek to add more appointment slots, Hsueh told reporters ahead of the dedication ceremony for the new Ministry of Environment in Taipei.
It would first see if it could move surplus budgets from other programs, as well as reallocate funding among regions based on demand, he said.
Asked about a shortage of nursing staff, Hsueh said that demand for nurses is seasonal, but seems to be particularly difficult this year.
This is in part due to hospital accreditation reviews, which place a certain demand on nursing staff, as well as an exodus of nurses from the industry following the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.
Despite this, numbers have already begun to stabilize, he said, adding that more nurses would be entering the workforce following the next accreditation exam to be held next month.
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
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