Partially state-owned China Steel Corp (中鋼) should give more to the community, given that its gas emissions may be damaging the health of Kaohsiung residents, a Kaohsiung City councilor said yesterday.
Lin Kuo-cheng (林國正) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said the Kaohsiung-based company had given significantly less funds to Kaohsiung than to Taipei.
LOWER LIFE EXPECTANCY
Lin said that the average life expectancy of Kaohsiung residents was 3.86 years less than Taipei residents in 2006.
“Even the number of cancer patients in Kaohsiung City is higher than that in Taipei City,” he said and asked whether the city’s higher incidence of liver, rectal and bladder cancer was a result of China Steel’s emissions.
In response, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said she would “rigorously monitor the environmental pollution caused by China Steel and take effective administrative measures to safeguard the interests of Kaohsiung.”
Lin said that, including taxes and contributions, the company gave NT$3.53 billion (US$116 million) to Taipei last year but only NT$1.93 billion to Kaohsiung.
At a recent hearing concerning expansion plans for Dragon Steel Corp (中龍), a China Steel subsidiary, the Environmental Protection Administration ordered the company to pay NT$1.5 billion to compensate for emissions of 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, Lin said.
The company’s carbon dioxide emissions were actually 21.78 million tonnes a year, Lin said, adding that the company should pay NT$3 billion.
The dioxins emitted by China Steel last year accounted for 42 percent of the nation’s total dioxin emissions and 93 percent of Kaohsiung’s dioxin emissions, Lin said.
As China Steel will convene a meeting of its board of directors next Thursday at which chairman Lin Wen-yuan (林文淵) will resign, Lin Kuo-cheng called on the company to appoint a successor with a background in environmental protection.
BLAST FURNACE
Meanwhile, China Steel shut its No. 1 blast furnace on Friday because of a faulty cooling box, cutting the mill’s capacity by 20 percent.
Repairs to the facility, which has an annual capacity of 2 million tonnes, may take a further one or two weeks, China Steel spokesman Chung Le-min (鍾樂民) said by phone yesterday.
China Steel, which can produce 11 million tonnes of crude steel a year, is tapping into its stockpiles because of the closure. The mill has four blast furnaces.
“Our shipments aren’t affected, as we have inventories of steel slabs,” Chung said.
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