The nation’s six special municipalities must each install cigarette waste receptacles in 650 locations by the end of November as part of the government’s plan to eliminate cigarette litter, the Ministry of Environment said yesterday.
Other local governments must install receptacles in 400 locations, while officials in the outlying counties must add them at 300 spots, the ministry said.
Minister of Environment Peng Chi-ming (彭?明) launched a cigarette butt-free initiative soon after taking office on May 20. He also unveiled six strategies to reduce cigarette litter, including changing the culture around smoking, tackling cigarette littering at the source, cracking down on littering, intensifying collaboration between the public and private sectors, and increasing research on the issue.
Photo: Taipei Times file
In a letter to local governments last month, the ministry charged them with implementing action plans to meet the “No Stub on the Ground” campaign and follow guidelines to install cigarette butt collection receptacles.
The guidelines stipulate that the receptacles be placed in popular smoking areas, such as outside convenience stores, restaurants, beverage shops, Internet cafes, hospitals and clinics, housing agencies, public transportation stations, parking lots and fuel stations, as well as around sidewalks, alleys, roads and drainage ditches, Environmental Management Administration official Wei Wen-yi (魏文宜) said.
They must also be far away from residential areas, she added.
Smokers would be fined NT$1,200 to NT$6,000 (US$37.57 to US$187.86) for cigarette littering in accordance with the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法), she said.
The action plan stipulates that law enforcement officers can issue fines for cigarette litterers if they see them doing so in front of a convenience store or if they were observed littering on surveillance systems.
“We would also regularly review the effectiveness of the punishment to curb cigarette littering,” Wei said.
Businesses would be encouraged to clean cigarette butts left outside their storefronts in the initial phase and enhance environment inspection in the medium term, she said.
In the long run, the ministry would announce the area that store owners are responsible for cleaning, she said.
The government would allocate about NT$18 million every year to fund the cleaning of ditches, which are often used as ashtrays by smokers, she said.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back
RSS