The government is to conduct a series of safety assessment of Formosa Plastics Group’s (FPG, 台塑集團) facilities in Yunlin County in July after three safety incidents occurred over the past three months, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) said yesterday.
The incidents — on March 6, March 21 and Friday last week — occurred at the plants of Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台灣化學纖維), with six workers hospitalized in last week’s incident.
“We are cooperating with the Ministry of Labor and the Environmental Protection Administration to execute a thorough checkup of the facilities,” Minister of Economic Affairs Lee Chih-kung (李世光) told a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee.
Lee’s remarks came as Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Su Chih-feng (蘇治芬) urged the ministry to take action over the issue, including inspecting the safety system and machinery at the plants.
Su claimed that the incidents were caused by the conglomerate’s failure to replace old machinery and update its safety system for years.
The Industrial Development Bureau said that a cross-ministry task force, domestic experts and academics are to check the plants’ manufacturing process, pipelines, firefighting systems, work environment and emissions.
“The examination will focus on the facilities that had safety incidents in the past five years. We estimate the on-site checkup will take more than one day to complete,” Industrial Development Bureau Acting Director-General Leu Jang-hwa (呂正華) said by telephone.
The ministry has been conducting annual checkups of the group’s various facilities, but the last time the ministry carried out a large-scale examination was in 2011 — a year after the group had seven big fires, Leu said.
FPG said the incidents this year were due to human error and had nothing to do with the condition of its equipment.
The group said the ministry examined its plants 17 times in the past five years and did not find any major problems, because the company conducts annual examinations of all of its facilities to ensure a safe working environment.
The group welcomes a large-scale inspection by the government in July, as it believes this can help clear up any public misunderstanding about its facilities, it said.
FPG’s complex in Yunlin is known as the nation’s sixth naphtha cracker. It covers 2,600 hectares, making it the second-largest petrochemical zone in Asia after the 3,200-hectare Singapore Petrochemical Complex on Jurong Island.
The Yunlin complex has a harbor and 53 plants, including a naphtha cracker, power plants, boilers and various facilities for its petrochemical and fiber operations. The majority of the plants are operated by the group’s four main units — Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化), Formosa Chemicals & Fibre, Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑) and Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠).
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