A Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker yesterday accused the management of the nation's premier airport of allowing illegal food vendors to turn the nation's gateway into a “night market.”
“In the morning, there are breakfast vendors, at noon, there are people selling mealboxes, and in the afternoon, there are even people selling clothes — is this really the most important airport in the country, or is it a night market?” KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) said at a press conference, while showing pictures that her assistants took at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
In one picture, a van is shown parked in the loading-unloading area of a terminal with the trunk open, and boxes of goods inside. In another picture, people had moved the boxes onto meal carts and were selling the lunchboxes to passers-by in the terminal.
Other pictures showed people consuming the boxed meals purchased from the vendors inside the terminals — some of the “customers” appeared to be airport employees.
“President Ma Ying-jeou [馬英九] has just announced a plan to revamp Taoyuan airport by renovating the buildings, creating a business center, a shopping mall and a food court to turn it into a first-class airport,” Lo said.
“Ironically, airport employees are the most frequent customers of these illegal vendors,” Lo said.
Many official stores and restaurants at the airport have forwarded their complaints to Lo, saying they are required to pay high rent and taxes, while illegal vendors are exempt from both, she said.
“There must be something wrong with how you manage the airport,” Lo told airport director Shiau Deng-ke (蕭登科) and Civil Aeronautics Administration deputy director-general Wang Te-ho (王德和), who were also at the press conference.
Shiau and Wang said they did not know of the illegal practice and promised to look into the matter.
“We will dispatch more people to patrol every corner of the terminals and will give them tickets if we encounter violators,” Shiau said.
Wang said the airport administration should be held responsible for failing to prevent the illegal practice, but added that he could understand why.
“The terminals are quite huge: Terminal 1 is more than 166,500m², while Terminal 2 is 308,000m², so of course they could have easily missed it,” Wang said. “Still, it's a mistake and I’ll keep an eye on [the airport administration] to make sure that they catch illegal vendors.”
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