Most people are scheduled to have 115 days off work this year, a calendar published by the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration showed.
The total accounts for public holidays, and all Saturdays and Sundays except for Feb. 17, which is a make-up work day, the calendar showed.
While the holidays are for government agencies and state-run entities, they are also commonly observed in the private sector, including at banks and most companies, as well as education providers.
Photo: Lee Jung-ping, Taipei Times
The calendar does not include Labor Day on May 1, when workers get a day off as stipulated by the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), or Armed Forces Day on Sept. 3 for military personnel.
On Labor Day, banks and financial markets are closed, but government offices and the postal service remain open.
New Year’s Day on Monday was the first public holiday of the year, marking the founding of the Republic of China in 1912.
The next public holiday in Taiwan is the week-long Lunar New Year from Feb. 8 to 14, with Feb. 17, a Saturday, being a work day with government offices and banks open.
Other public holidays include Feb. 28 Peace Memorial Day, a four-day break from April 4 to 7 to mark Children’s Day and Tomb Sweeping Day, and the Dragon Boat Festival long weekend from June 8 to 10.
In the second half of the year, there are only two public holidays: Mid-Autumn Festival on Sept. 17 and Double Ten National Day on Oct. 10, the calendar showed.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
RSS