PHANTOM ASSISTANTS?Tung Chung-yan allegedly misused a stipend to pay assistants to pay a credit card bill of NT$115,000 and to settle a NT$20,000 debt

Taipei Times
Date: , Mar 03, 2016
By: Sean Lin / Staff reporter

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Tung Chung-yan (童仲彥) has been accused of fraud and forgery after he was alleged to have misappropriated NT$135,000 (US$4,045) from his stipend quota by exaggerating the number of assistants he employed.

Tung and his wife were released without bail by the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office early yesterday morning following a lengthy questioning session.

Prosecutors and investigators on Tuesday took in 32 people — including Tung, his wife and his former and present assistants — for questioning after raiding Tung’s office and confiscating his assistants’ documents for investigation.

Prosecutors said that Tung was accused of having exaggerated the number of staff he employed from January 2011 to August 2014 to appropriate funds from the NT$240,000 monthly quota granted to Taipei city councilors to hire assistants, adding that Tung ostensibly hired more than 20 assistants during this period.

The regulations governing salaries paid out by Taipei city councilors to their aides stipulate that each assistant should be paid no less than NT$20,000 and no more than NT$80,000 every month.     [FULL  STORY]

NUMBERS GAME:While the past two months saw a drop in the number of Chinese group travelers, the number of independent travelers increased, the premier said

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 02, 2016
By: Chang Hsiao-ti / Staff reporter

Premier Simon Chang (張善政) yesterday dismissed speculation that the number of Chinese visitors would drop by 30 percent from March 20, saying that tourist numbers have actually increased.

Speaking at a question-and-answer session in the legislature, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) said that during a recent visit to Sun Moon Lake (日月潭), he noticed that about one-third of the shops were empty and he was concerned that a sharp drop in Chinese tourist numbers would have a serious impact on the tourism industry.

Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Andrew Hsia (夏立言) said he had not heard anything about a Chinese government plan to limit the number of tourists from his Chinese counterpart.

The number of Chinese tourists “depends on market demand and progress in cross-strait relations,” Hsia said, adding that the Tourism Bureau is working on a raft of measures should a drop occur, such as a project to attract more visitors from Southeast Asia.

Statistics showed that the number of Chinese visiting as members of tour groups fell slightly in January and last month, but the number of Chinese traveling independently surged, so the total number actually grew by more than 10 percent over the period, Chang said.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 01, 2016
By: Staff writer, with CNA

Software engineer has become the top-ranked dream job in Taiwan this year among those seeking to change jobs after the Lunar New Year holiday, replacing civil servant, according to an online analysis by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Being a civil servant has long been seen as a secure job with a stable income, but the relatively high benefits for public servants have drawn criticism more recently, limiting interest in pursuing a government job, a report on the analysis said.

The analysis was aimed at identifying the 10 most wanted jobs among Internet users seeking to change jobs after receiving their year-end bonuses and relaxing during their Lunar New Year holiday.

The ministry used scripts to establish a database that stored online articles and conducted context analysis using keywords in the database.

The analysis on the job change preferences of Internet users was conducted on data collected from Feb. 1 to Tuesday last week. Most of the favored jobs share common elements, such as a promising future, high salaries or large year-end bonuses.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-02-29
By: Central News Agency

The central Taiwan county of Yunlin said Monday that it will restart a long-stalled afforestation plan in four barren coastal areas to increase ecosystem productivity there.

The plan is aimed at converting a total of 500 hectares of barren land in Taixi, Sihhu, Kouhu and Shuilin townships into rich eco-forests, according to county officials.

The four coastal areas are usually ravaged by floods in summer and fall and by sea blasts in winter, which makes it hard for plants to survive, the officials said.

An ecoforestry plan was launched by the county government in 2003 but was suspended in 2013 due to a conflicting national program introduced by the Council of Agriculture (COA) to cultivate fallow lands. As a result, Yulin’s afforestation efforts stalled after afforestation of only 1,104 hectares of land.     [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 01, 2016
By: Wang Chieh and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer

Premier Simon Chang (張善政) on Saturday declared Tainan the nation’s showcase region for soil stability improvement in response to the the magnitude 6.4 earthquake that struck southern Taiwan on Feb. 6, killing 117 people and causing extensive damage.

However, under current municipal ordinances, people who lost property because of soil liquefaction as a result of the earthquake are not entitled to housing-related aid or subsidies.

The Tainan Public Works Bureau said it confirmed soil liquefaction occurred in 14 locations in four Tainan districts: Jhongsi (中西), Northern (北), Annan (安南) and Sinshih (新市).

Bureau inspectors said they suspect soil liquefaction occurred in 1,004 locations in clusters throughout the city, mainly in areas near East Central District’s Wenhe Road, Annan District’s Huian Street, Fuan Road and Anhe Road, and Sinshih District’s Sanmin Street.

Ten roads in Annan District need repairs — nine of which are located on a damaged grid of roads, with Huian Street at its center in Siding Borough (溪定) — and another eight damaged roads in Jhongsi, Northern and Sinshih districts also need repairs, the bureau said.     [FULL  STORY]

COMPENSATION:An estimated 4,800 passengers are entitled to receiving refunds of 50 percent of train fares after facing delays, the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp said

Taipei Times
Date: Feb 29, 2016
By: Shelley Shan / Staff reporter

About 10,000 high speed-rail passengers faced delays on the second day of the 228 Memorial Day holiday due to an abnormality in the landslide detection system in a section of the railway in Taoyuan, the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp said.
The company said that an alarm went off at 11:31am, forcing it to cancel train No. 1622.
Both the staff monitoring the movement of the slopes along the railway tracks from surveillance cameras and the security guards arriving at the site in which the alarm was sounded did not find anything abnormal at the scene, the company said.
To ensure the passengers’ safety, all trains passing through the section were ordered to slow down, the company said, adding that trains were delayed about 10 to 20 minutes.
The high-speed rail resumed normal operations at 2:07pm after the maintenance crew fixed the erroneous alert, the company said.      [FULL  STORY]