Immigration authorities yesterday said they have located an Indonesian migrant worker wanted on suspicion of identity theft whose whereabouts had been unknown since she tested positive for HIV.
A specialized unit from the National Immigration Agency (NIA) found the 38-year-old pregnant woman in Taoyuan early yesterday, immigration agents said.
She is expected to be transferred to the Miaoli District Prosecutors’ Office following allegations that she committed fraud by assuming the identity of another person, they said.
Ching Shao-an (荊少安), head of the NIA’s specialized operation squad in Taoyuan, said the woman arrived in Taiwan to work as a caregiver in July last year, but in December left her job to join her Indonesian boyfriend, also an absconded migrant worker, who lives in Yunlin County.
The woman last month discovered she was pregnant and decided to have an abortion, Ching said.
When seeking an abortion at a Yunlin clinic on June 8, she allegedly used an Alien Resident Certificate and a National Health Insurance card borrowed from an Indonesian acquaintance on the pretext of helping her obtain a SIM card, the NIA’s Yunlin County Service Center said.
Her abortion request was refused by the doctor on the grounds that she was already six months pregnant, the NIA said.
The clinic notified Yunlin County’s Public Health Bureau after the results of a blood test showed that the woman was HIV positive, it said.
However, the health bureau said that when it tried to contact the woman about the test results, it instead reached the acquaintance whose identity documents she had allegedly stolen.
An investigation into the woman found that she had four Taiwanese boyfriends, bureau officials said, adding that they were concerned the virus could spread given the difficulties authorities are having in identifying the men.
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
ALLEGED SABOTAGE: The damage inflicted by the vessel did not affect connection, as data were immediately rerouted to other cables, Chunghwa Telecom said Taiwan suspects that a Chinese-owned cargo vessel damaged an undersea cable near its northeastern coast on Friday, in an alleged act of sabotage that highlights the vulnerabilities of Taipei’s offshore communications infrastructure. The ship is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company whose director is Chinese, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. An unidentified Taiwanese official cited in the report described the case as sabotage. The incident followed another Chinese vessel’s suspected involvement in the breakages of data cables in the Baltic Sea in November last year. While fishing trawlers are known to sometimes damage such equipment, nation states have also
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