Taiwan tourism should enhance safety management: spokesperson

BEIJING - A Chinese mainland spokesperson on Wednesday urged Taiwan to improve safety across its whole tourist sector and to take measures to ensure the safety of mainland travellers.

An Fengshan, spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, said at a routine press conference that Taiwan should provide a safer travelling environment and conditions for mainland tourists.

A total of 21 tourists from the Chinese mainland were injured Saturday in a bus accident in Kaohsiung city, southern Taiwan. The bus, which was carrying 25 tourists and a tour guide from the mainland, hit the top of a tunnel when the driver took the wrong turn.

All the injured were taken to hospital. Everyone, apart from the tour guide who remains in hospital, have returned to the mainland, according to An.

An said mainland authorities had extended their sympathies to those injured and helped handle the accident through non-governmental tourism organizations on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.

The mainland, An said, was deeply saddened by a string of accidents over recent years that had involved mainland tourists.

In July 2016, 26 people -- 23 tourists and a tour guide from the Chinese mainland, and the Taiwanese driver and tour guide -- were killed when a tour bus crashed into a barrier on a highway and caught fire near Taoyuan Airport in Taiwan.

Investigation found that the driver was drunk and had deliberately set the bus on fire. He had been found guilty of rape before the accident, but was not put into prison as he had appealed.