Thousands of people yesterday marched in Taichung and Kaohsiung, calling on the government to stop using coal in power generation and end the phenomenon of “one sky, two Taiwans” caused by air pollution predominantly affecting the nation’s southern regions.
The demonstration in Taichung saw most participants dressed in black, which they said represented lungs darkened by air pollution caused by burning coal.
The protesters gathered at Taichung City Council Square at 1pm and outlined the words “no coal” and a map of Taiwan with their bodies for an aerial photograph.
Photo: Liao Yao-tung, Taipei Times
They then marched around the Taichung City Government Building until about 5:20pm.
Hsu Hsin-hsin (許心欣), a member of the Taiwan Healthy Air Action Alliance, which organized the Taichung protest, said that air pollution is caused by the government’s past policies that wrongly put excessive emphasis on industrial development, but it is trying to fool the public by saying that local pollution is mostly caused by pollutants coming from China.
To improve the air quality in southern Taiwan, the Executive Yuan should relocate the offices of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Environmental Protection Administration and the Ministry of Health and Welfare to the south, she said.
Photo: Liao Yao-tung, Taipei Times
Before the march, a member of the Central Taiwan Citizen Action Front raised placards that read “The Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] is the biggest pollution source in Taiwan” and “Searching for blue skies, but not for the pan-blue camp,” which angered a KMT supporter who demanded that the group leave the area.
Everyone — government officials, environmentalists, academics and pollution producers — should join forces to tackle the problem of air pollution, which should be regarded as a “common enemy” of Taiwanese, alliance director Yeh Guang-perng (葉光芃) said.
While Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has set up guidelines for regulating the use of coal and petroleum coke in the city’s factories, he should work harder to close the Taichung Power Plant, which has 10 coal-fired power generators, Yeh said.
The alliance estimated that 5,000 people attended the parade.
The parade in Kaohsiung attracted about 3,000 participants, organizer and Southern Taiwan Anti-Air Pollution Alliance convener Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said.
Also at 1pm, the protesters met at Exit 4 of the Aozihdi MRT Station (凹子底) and marched along Boai 2nd Road (博愛二路).
To improve air quality in the south, state-run utilities, such as China Steel Corp (中鋼), CPC Corp, Taiwan (中油) and Taiwan Power Co (台電), should reduce their polluting emissions by 50 percent within three years, the southern alliance said, adding that coal burning should also be banned.
The government should distribute more air pollution funds to residents living near Kaohsiung’s industrial areas to cover the cost of epidemiological studies and health risk evaluations, it said.
KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) attended the protest along with other KMT members.
People took to the streets in such cold weather because they could not bear the effects of air pollution anymore, Wu said, calling on the government to launch more effective policies to deal with air pollution.
Additional reporting by Chang Jui-chen, Ou Su-mei and Hung Chen-hung
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