The government is seeking legislative approval to expand its COVID-19 relief fund to pay cash subsidies to families with young children, totaling up to NT$25 billion (NT$90,035 million), a Cabinet source said yesterday.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) earlier yesterday convened a Cabinet meeting to discuss a possible budget allocation to aid people affected by a surge in domestic COVID-19 cases this month, Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) said.
The Cabinet agreed on prioritizing families with young children and children with disabilities, Lo said.
Photo: screen grab from the Legislative Yuan Parliamentary TV Web site
Families with children who attend elementary school or younger, and children with disabilities who attend junior-high or high school would receive NT$10,000 per child, the source said.
The plan would cost the government about NT$25 billion, as there are about 2.45 million children in those groups in Taiwan, they said.
The legislature is expected to pass an amendment bill expanding the nation’s COVID-19 relief fund from NT$420 billion to NT$630 billion on Monday, they said.
Separately yesterday, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) told a legislative meeting about Taiwan’s efforts to purchase COVID-19 vaccines.
Taiwan People’s Party caucus convener Chiu Chen-yuan (邱臣遠) said that Taiwan’s COVID-19 defense had collapsed due to lax quarantine rules for airline crew members, which lead to cluster infections among China Airlines pilots and workers at Novotel Taipei Taoyuan International Airport hotel.
“Taiwanese know that the origin of this big domestic outbreak is the China Airlines-Novotel infection cluster,” Chiu said, asking whether Chen presided over the meeting where quarantine requirements for crew members were reduced to three days, with 11 days of self-health management.
Chen said that he did not preside over that meeting, adding that the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) at the time believed that shorter rules were sufficient.
Concerning COVID-19 vaccines, Chen said that he expects that
negotiations with the US would lead to the domestic production of US-developed vaccines.
Responding to accusations from lawmakers that the CECC had mismanaged Taiwan’s vaccine supply, as evidenced by the low numbers of doses that have so far arrived in Taiwan, Chen said: “Everyone knows that right now the whole world is fighting over vaccines.”
“We have been working to find vaccines and negotiate procurements, but I am unable to confirm to lawmakers when deals can be made and shipments arrive,” he added.
Taiwan aims to inoculate 60 percent of its population with at least one dose by October, Chen said.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
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