Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday handed out food vouchers to two low-income families.
Hau said he would like to see vouchers distributed to 10,000 families, preferably delivered in person by city officials. He said he hoped at least 636 families would receive vouchers by tomorrow.
Applicants must pass a screening process for the vouchers, he said.
Accompanied by borough wardens and Taipei City Department of Civil Affairs Commissioner Huang Lu Ching-ru (黃呂錦茹), Hau gave 50 vouchers with a face value of NT$100 to two families in Datong District (大同).
He then accompanied one of the families to FamilyMart to buy food.
The vouchers can only be used at FamilyMart stores and cannot be spent on cigarettes or alcohol.
When asked by reporters what she thought of the vouchers, a woman in the family who asked to be identified as Miss Luo said the vouchers were important for families like hers but “are not enough,” adding that she needed a job.
Luo said she was disappointed when she found out that she could not use the vouchers to buy a bowl of noodle soup.
Hau said the vouchers could only be spent at FamilyMart because the city had teamed up with the chain to offer reduced prices for shoppers paying with the coupons.
Luo said her mother could not work, while she herself earned very little washing dishes.
Luo said her mother had been a street cleaner for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, but had stopped working two years ago after a botched operation on her spine.
Although her mother received NT$3,000 per month from the city because of her physical disability, she did not qualify for subsidies for low-income families.
Huang Lu said that as of yesterday, a total of 1,437 families had applied for the food vouchers. Hau said all applicants who qualified would receive the vouchers.
Thirty-one city department officials and borough wardens will distribute the vouchers in designated areas, she said.
The Taipei City Government’s food vouchers follow on the heels of a similar program in Kaohsiung in January.
The Kaohsiung City Government launched a monthly NT$1,500 food voucher program for 300 low-income families.
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