IMPROVEMENTS PROMISED: His instructions were not clear enough when he announced the grants on Monday, confusing people and local district staff, the premier said

Taipei Times
Date: May 08, 2020
By: Sean Lin / Staff reporter

Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday apologized and promised improvements after chaotic scenes outside local government offices on Wednesday as uninsured workers waited in long lines to apply for NT$10,000 grants, while the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) blasted the Cabinet for not caring about ordinary people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The district offices’ lack of efficiency in handling the grant applications has come under fire, as well as the confusing eligibility rules.

Nationwide, district office employees on Wednesday only approved 12 of the 10,313 applicants, Yang Chin-ching (楊錦青), director-general of the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Department of Social Assistance and Social Work told reporters at the Executive Yuan in Taipei.

Su later told a news conference that the chaos occurred after he did not make his instructions clear enough when he announced the grants on Monday, which led to competition among applicants.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 06 May, 2020
By: Shirley Lin

President Tsai Ing-wen has announced that Taiwan will soon set up a national human rights committee. The committee will fall under the purview of the Control Yuan, the government’s leading watchdog body.

On Wednesday, Tsai said that it has been ten years since the Presidential Office established the Human Rights Consultative Committee. However, she said that Taiwan still has room for improvement when it comes to human rights issues.    [FULL  STORY]

Channel News Asia
Date: 07 May 2020
By: AFP

WASHINGTON: The United States on Wednesday (May 6) urged the World Health Organization to defy Chinese pressure and invite Taiwan to its annual meeting, which will discuss the coronavirus pandemic.

The United States itself has yet to confirm its participation in the May 18-19 talks of the World Health Assembly, which comes after President Donald Trump vowed to slash funding for the UN body.

"I want to call on all nations, including those in Europe, to support Taiwan's participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly and other relevant United Nations venues," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters.

"I also call upon WHO Director-General Tedros (Adhanom Ghebreyesus) to invite Taiwan to observe this month's WHA, as he has the power to do, and as his predecessors have done on multiple occasions," he said.    [FULL  STORY]

Video conference held on Wednesday between officials and experts from three countries

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/05/06
By:  Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – In a video conference held on Wednesday morning (May 6), Taiwan shared its approach to tackling the coronavirus (COVID-19) with officials from local governments in the U.S. and Canada as well as medical representatives.

The two-hour meeting included Taiwan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉), Taiwan Adventist Hospital President Huang Hui-ting (黃暉庭) and his team, and the governors of both Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, Lourdes A. Leon Guerrero and Ralph DLG. Torres, respectively. Government officials and medical experts from California, Washington, D.C., Hawaii, and the Canadian city of Toronto also attended the event.

Taiwan’s medical team shared the country’s coronavirus response, which has generally been seen as successful. The deputy minister remarked that six factors have characterized the so-called “Taiwan model,” including quick responses, proactive precautions, centralized command, and cross-ministerial efforts.

The rationing of masks and alcohol, which can be turned into sanitizers, has also been key to the government’s fight against the coronavirus. In addition, Hsu noted that the medical experts from the Centers for Disease Control have been carrying out meticulous tasks to track each confirmed case and their contacts.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 05/06/2020
By: Tang Pei-chun, Tai Ya-chen and Chiang Yi-ching

Brussels/London, May 6 (CNA) Five of Taiwan's diplomatic allies have put forth a proposal for the issue of Taiwan's exclusion from the World Health Organization (WHO) to be put on the agenda for discussion by its decision-making body later this month.

The proposal was made in letters sent separately between April 21 and May 5 to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus by the governments of Nicaragua, Palau, Eswatini, Saint Lucia and the Marshall Islands.

In the letters, the five nations, all diplomatic allies of Taiwan, said the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgency and importance of leaving out no one from the global health network.

The continued exclusion of Taiwan from the WHO undermines the interests of its members and endangers global health, the allies said.    [FULL  STORY]

RELAXING MEASURES: With only one imported case confirmed yesterday, the CECC said that, from tomorrow, up to 1,000 spectators would be able attend each CPBL game

Taipei Times
Date: May 07, 2020
By: Lee I-chia / Staff reporter

Taiwanese in China’s Hubei Province are to be allowed to return to the nation on their own starting tomorrow, when the CPBL would be able to admit up to 1,000 spectators to baseball games, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday.

Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads of the center, said that Taiwanese in China’s Hubei Province, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, would not be required to take chartered flights or quasi-chartered flights from designated airports to return home.

The Chinese government imposed an unprecedented lockdown of Wuhan and other cities in Hubei on Jan. 23, leaving more than 1,000 Taiwanese, as well as their Chinese spouses and children, stranded in the province.

The CECC in late February announced that the National Immigration Agency had marked the identification papers of the Taiwanese in Hubei, and that they would only be allowed to return on chartered flights.    [FULL  STORY]

Radiio Taiwan International
Date: May 5, 2020
By: Elena Pavlovska

Taiwan’s foreign ministry on Tuesday said that China cannot represent its people on the world stage. It also urged the World Health Organization to cast off China’s control during the coronavirus pandemic.

The island has been largely excluded from involvement with the WHO due to pressure from China, which refuses to acknowledge its sovereignty.

The WHO’s principal legal officer, Steven Solomon, said on Monday that the WHO recognised the People’s Republic of China as the “one legitimate representative of China”, in keeping with United Nations policy since 1971, and that the question of Taiwan’s attendance was one for the WHO’s 194 member states.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said the 1971 decision  only resolved the issue of who represented China, not the issue of Taiwan, and did not grant China the power to represent Taiwan internationally: “Only the democratically-elected Taiwanese government can represent Taiwan’s 23 million people in the international community”, she said.    FULL  STORY]

Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-je wants to wait until full report has been completed

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/05/05
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taipei City fire chief Wu Jun-hung (吳俊鴻) tendered his resignation Tuesday (May 4) to take responsibility for the April 26 blaze which killed six people at a KTV parlor.

A preliminary investigation found that several fire prevention systems, such as fire alarms and automatic sprinklers, had been turned off at the Cashbox Partyworld KTV while repair work was going on in the 14-story building.

While city government officials said Wu’s decision showed his sense of responsibility, Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) wanted to wait until a definitive report about the fire was completed before deciding on his fate, CNA reported.

The city administration said its priorities were improving supervision and making sure such a tragedy could not happen again. Officials felt sorry they had been unable to protect the citizens’ lives but would not evade their responsibility, a deputy mayor said.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 05/05/2020
By Chen Chun-hua and Chiang Yi-ching

Taipei, May 5 (CNA) LGBTQ people in Taiwan have been reporting improved interpersonal relationships with their colleagues and managers at work, saying that their privacy is being more respected, according to the results of a survey released Tuesday.

A total of 37.9 percent of 2,121 people surveyed earlier this year said they have often been encouraged to date someone of the opposite sex or asked about their romantic relationships in the workplace, a decrease from 56.3 percent in 2016, when the survey was last conducted.

The percentage of respondents who said they have had to pretend to be straight at work has also dropped, as has the percentage of those who have received suggestions that they should change their gender expression, the survey results showed.

This indicates that LGBTQ people currently have more positive interpersonal relationships at work than they had four years ago, said the Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan and the Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association, who jointly conducted the survey.    [FULL  STORY]

MAKING A POINT: The WHO director-general can invite an observer to join the assembly, just as when Taiwan was invited from 2009 to 2016, Joanne Ou said

Taipei Times
Date: May 06, 2020
By: Lin Chia-nan / Staff reporter

Taiwan has not yet received an invitation to attend the World Health Assembly (WHA), but would strive until the last moment to participate, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday.

The WHA, the WHO’s decision-making body, is expected to hold a virtual meeting on May 18 for its 73rd session.

Taiwan has not been invited to the WHA since 2016, when the WHO sent Taiwan an invitation two weeks before the assembly, and just before the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) handed over power to the Democratic Progressive Party.

At a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday, WHO principal legal officer Steven Solomon said that “some 49 years ago the UN and the WHO decided that there is only one legitimate representative of China within the UN systems, and that is the People’s Republic of China.”
[FULL  STORY]