About 5 percent of Taiwan's population, or 1.05 million people, are physically or mentally challenged, representing one out of every 23 people in the country, a league spokeswoman quoted the Ministry of the Interior statistics as indicating.

In a welfare appraisal of all cities and counties around the country, the league found that people with disabilities are treated best in Taipei City, Kaohsiung City and Kinmen Island, according to Wang You-ling, secretary-general of the league.

The findings were made based on the budgets each city reserves for providing services to the disabled and the number of disabled people in each city or county as of June this year.

The league made its appraisal by using criteria including the budget for and content of special education programs, funding for facilitating employment for the disabled, community services and whether the cities have a barrier-free environment for the disabled, Wang said.

Kinmen Island moved up to the third place in the disabled people's welfare appraisal. The outlying island has a relatively small disabled population, but has a relatively big budget for their welfare, thanks to the financial aid contributed by Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor Inc., the cash cow of the county, Wang said.

Yunlin, Changhua and Taitung counties were ranked around the bottom of the appraisal list, she said.

Financial gaps between cities and counties directly resulted in welfare gaps, but cities and counties where finances are better, do not necessarily provide better welfare to the disabled, the study found.

Of all the cities and counties appraised, Chiayi City, Taichung City and Tainan City posted big improvements in terms of increasing welfare for the disabled over the past year, but Tainan County, Taitung County, Yilan County, Miaoli County and Hsinchu County had all regressed.

Surprisingly, Wang said, Hsinchu City, which has long been praised as a "city of welfare, " had one of the worst records in the special education and barrier-free environment criteria.

The outlying island of Matsu had the best performance in terms of teacher/student ratio among all appraised administrative districts, with a ratio of 1-4, compared to 1-14 in Hsinchu City, the worst in this category, Wang noted.

(By Hsu Jui-ting and Deborah Kuo)