With the Taipei City Government set to announce today its decision on whether to dissolve the contract it has with Taipei Dome contractor Farglory Group (遠雄集團), the conglomerate yesterday said it would comply with the city’s requirements on completing safety reviews.
Despite Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) saying that he and Farglory chairman Chao Teng-hsiung (趙藤雄) did not reach a consensus during a private meeting in the middle of last month, Farglory spokesman Jacky Yang (楊舜欽) yesterday told reporters that the meeting was a turning point that aligned the goals of both sides — to complete the construction of the Dome complex.
Yang said Farglory had delivered a letter of consent to the city government, stating its willingness to comply with legal requirements to which the complex had been subject.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Yang said the conglomerate would complete ongoing reviews of the complex’s fire safety and readiness for emergency evacuation being performed by the Construction and Planning Agency’s Taiwan Architecture and Building Center.
It would apply for a construction license change with the city government and deliver requisite documents to the city’s Department of Urban Development and Department of Environmental Protection for review, he said.
Farglory would build fire compartments between the Dome and an adjacent department store capable of withstanding a fire for two hours, which is going beyond a legal requirement that stipulates such facilities should be able to withstand fire for one hour, Yang said.
Photo: CNA
Farglory would set up broadcasting systems, emergency lighting, automatic foam sprinklers, smoke dampers, electromagnetic wave enhancing systems and Wi-Fi hotspots to facilitate evacuation in case of an emergency, he said.
When asked if Farglory would comply with the city’s demand that it cut the complex’s capacity from 140,000 to 90,000, and reduce its commercial space by 5,000 ping (16,528.9m2) to facilitate evacuation, Yang said the group would respect the results of the center’s reviews.
“Farglory understands that the mayor cares a great deal about the Taipei Dome, so we are willing to make compromises,” he said, adding that he hoped the city would respond to the group with goodwill.
Taipei Deputy Mayor Teng Chia-chi (鄧家基) praised the conglomerate for acknowledging the importance of public safety and for agreeing to proceed with the build-operate-transfer project in accordance with the law.
When asked whether Farglory’s reluctance to cut the complex’s commercial space and capacity could be counted as concessions, he said that the city was glad to see any form of concession.
Teng did not give a definite answer to the distribution of authority over the seven safety reviews.
Yang said that all seven reviews had been transferred to the center at a request Chao proposed in July, but Teng said it is possible that relevant city government agencies would conduct a number of the reviews.
The decision on whether to dissolve the contract will be announced today, Teng said.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
RSS