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One of the top stories from this past week involved Premier Jiang Yi-huah approving an annual budget on Tuesday to reward local government efforts on food safety. That’s in light of a string of food scandals that have rocked the nation over the past several months.
The fund of NT$1 billion (about US$33 million), will be used to reward local governments that have done well in ensuring food safety. Local governments that are not resolving their food safety problems may also have their budgets cut in the future.
In the future, the central government will evaluate local governments’ performance in dealing with food safety. It will also publicly post the ranking and performance of cities and counties in this respect.
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Also this past week, the culture ministry said it is set to reveal more than 10,000 court documents from Taiwan’s martial law era. That was the word from Culture Minister Lung Yingtai on Monday.
Taiwan imposed martial law between 1949 and 1987. Many people were imprisoned for alleged sedition and spying for China. Culture Minister Lung Yingtai said that these documents originally belonged to the military intelligence bureau, archives bureau, and the defense ministry. She said while most of the documents are only available as photocopies, they provide important information for researchers to understand the martial law period. Lung said the documents will finally reveal the ugly truth of the past.
Lung said the ministry will need more time to organize the documents and to ensure that political prisoners’ privacy is respected. So they won’t be available to the public until 2016.
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And finally this past week the Act of Gender Equality in Employment has cleared the legislative floor. The labor ministry said on Friday that the revision will have a positive impact on more than 300,000 workers.
Under the act, female workers will be allowed five days paid leave for prenatal health checks, while paid leave for male workers at the time of their child's birth has been increased from three to five days.