Overwork may have led to city official's death

As the Taipei City Government yesterday formally disciplined five government officials held responsible for allowing shoddy materials to be used in Taipei's Tachih Bridge construction project, the sudden death of one of the disciplined officials cast a pall over the scandal.

Although the actual cause of death was not announced, an official statement from the city's maintenance works department prompted suspicion that Lee Hung-cheng (李宏誠), 50, may have died from overwork.

Lee, chief of the department's supply division, received one minor demerit for negligent supervision of the project.

Lee was found unconscious on the floor of his office at around 8:45am yesterday. He was pronounced dead at 11:30am after being rushed to the Taipei Medical College Hospital.

The hospital, however, refused to issue a death certificate, saying that a coroner had to be present since Lee had not shown any signs of life on his arrival at the hospital.

According to the written statement issued by the maintenance works department late yesterday afternoon, Lee had been working for 55 hours without a break before his death.

"Lee started his shift at the department's ad hoc typhoon relief center at 11pm on July 28 after the Central Weather Bureau issued the land warning for Typhoon Toraji," the statement said.

According to others who shared the shift with Lee, the last time Lee was seen alive in his office was at around 5am when he was "stretching his muscles."

The department promised to help Lee's family to organize his funeral.

In a news conference held after the weekly closed-door city affairs meeting, William Chen (陳威仁), director of the Bureau of Public Works (工務局), said that although police investigations had concluded that no one in the bureau's maintenance works department had done anything illegal, five department officials, including Lee, still faced disciplinary action.

Department director Lo Chun-sheng (羅俊昇) received one reprimand for supervising the project poorly.

The lead project engineer, Chen Yu-hsien (陳毓賢), received two reprimands for carrying out his own supervisory role poorly.

Project superintendent Shen Ming-hsun (沈明勳) received one major demerit for negligent conduct of inspections on construction materials.

Chief of the department's division of public work affairs, Chen Chou-chun (陳周駿), received one minor demerit for failing to take pro-active measures to address the matter after shoddy materials had been found to have been used in the bridge's construction.

In addition to the punishment, Chen said that the bureau also planned to spend more than NT$100 million on reinforcement of the buttresses on the 823m-long bridge.

Although the project is about 55 percent complete, Chen said that the reinforcement work, which could take place while construction continues, would not slow down the project.

The bureau has integrated its three material quality control centers into one new center and added 10 more staff members. The center is scheduled to become operational today.

Tachih Bridge, which runs across Keelung River and connects Sungshan and Tachih, is costing NT$2 billion to build and is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.

The city discovered problems with rebar for the bridge in March after a random check.

When the city conducted another inspection on March 12, it discovered that some of the rebar waiting to be examined in a materials examination room had been secretly changed.