People with disabilities and pedestrian-rights activists yesterday protested in Taipei and other cities against the Cabinet’s planned decision to reduce the punishment for minor traffic violations.
About 300 people, including people in wheelchairs, requested that lawmakers block the proposal.
They held placards in front of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei and shouted slogans such as “We demand traffic law enforcement,” and “Stop subverting road safety.”
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
The protest in Taipei was organized by Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance director Chen Kai-ning (陳愷寧), who said lawmakers should discuss the proposal publicly and it is a “malevolent law” severely violating pedestrians’ rights.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ plan — which was approved by the Executive Yuan on March 7 and passed on to the Legislative Yuan for voting — is to relax penalties for 10 “minor violations,” not giving drivers any demerit points from these and canceling the reward system to report such incidents, is a step back, making Taiwan a “pedestrian hell” again, Chen said.
The “minor violations” include actions such as talking on a mobile phone when driving, riding a scooter on sidewalks and illegal parking on pedestrian crossings, intersections, bus stops and in front of fire hydrants.
Taiwan Association for Disability Rights head Liu Yu-chi (劉于濟), who uses a wheelchair due to spinal muscular atrophy disorder, said Taiwan has more than 1.2 million people with disabilities experiencing difficulty accessing streets and public spaces.
The proposal would encourage illegal parking and make the situation much worse for wheelchair users, Liu said.
Student Pedestrian Union and young activist groups headed a flash mob event in Kaohsiung, in which protesters marched in the downtown area to protest the proposal.
Some protesters stuck notes on an effigy of Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材), reading: “More dangerous roads, more killing by cars,” and “Walking has become very dangerous.” They demanded that Wang resign.
Wang Chin-chien (王晉謙), one of the organizers, said the ministry prioritized drivers, while ignoring the rights of pedestrians, adding: “The listed violations are not minor, they are quite serious.”
“The ministry is putting people’s lives at risk, and this will lead to more deadly accidents,” Wang Chin-chien said.
“The minister of transportation and communications said he wanted to promote safety for pedestrians, but he is doing the opposite,” he said. “It is shameful, and we demand the blocking of this proposal.”
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