President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday declined to comment on who bore responsibility for the flooding in southern Taiwan following Typhoon Fanapi.
Ma said this was not the right time to talk about the subject as the priority was to drain flooded areas, clean up garbage and restore water and electricity supplies.
Emphasizing that many factors contributed to the flooding, Ma said the matter should be determined by experts and there was plenty of time for this.
PHOTO: SU FU-NAN, TAIPEI TIMES
Ma made the remarks while touring hard-hit areas in Kaohsiung County yesterday with Kaohsiung County Commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Greater Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順).
Ma heard complaints during the tour that compensation for typhoon victims was inadequate.
Kaohsiung City Government has announced that it will provide every household with NT$20,000 in subsidies on condition that flood waters exceeded a height of 50cm in the area and the house was occupied at the time. It plans to offer NT$5,000 to every member of the household, to a maximum of five, based on the same criteria.
The city estimates that between 17,000 and 23,000 households could be eligible for the subsidies. Low-income households could get another NT$5,000 in compensation from the municipal government.
In Kaohsiung and Pingtung counties, homeowners are set to receive a lump sum of NT$25,000 from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and county governments, on the condition that flooding exceeded 50cm. Homeowners who suffered flooding of more than 1m can receive an extra NT$5,000.
An estimated 42,000 households are eligible in Kaohsiung County and 80,000 in Pingtung County. Low-income households in the areas could receive another NT$5,000 from the Disaster Relief Foundation.
Ma said the central government would work to ensure that compensation levels for the two counties matched those in Kaohsiung City.
Huang proposed that car owners should be eligible for national compensation if their vehicles were damaged in the flooding.
While Ma declined to comment on Huang’s proposal, he hinted that more money from the central government could be available.
“The [compensation] is never enough,” he said, telling reporters he believed the situation was different for people affected by the heaviest flooding. “We will be basing a [compensation] figure on the [individual] realistic conditions.”
In a visit to Kaohsiung County’s Mitou Township (彌陀), Ma told the Council of Agriculture to help fish farmers restore their farms.
One farmer told Ma that he was in shock after his fish farm was ruined. He had to catch fish and shrimp washed from his farm with a fishing net and had tried to patch up his facilities to no avail, he said.
Ma also visited Pingtung County. While in Ziguan Township (梓官), Ma asked the Water Resources Agency and the Construction and Planning Agency to conduct a comprehensive review of the government policy of regulating rivers and watercourses after Yang said the township and the county lacked funding to procure land to build detention basins.
Ziguan is located on the banks of Dianbao Creek (典寶溪). The township office only finished dredging the river at the beginning of this year, also increasing the height of a levee, but it still lacks larger pumping stations.
Tsai I-hsun (蔡易勳), director of the township’s Construction Department, said they wanted to build two pumping stations but were still awaiting instructions from the Water Resources Agency and the Construction and Planning Agency two years after requesting guidance.
Also See: KMT, DPP trade barbs over flooding
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