The Nanfangao Bridge (南方澳橋) in Yilan County’s Suao Township (蘇澳), which collapsed on Tuesday, was only inspected once — by the county government — in the 21 years it was open, said Taiwan International Ports Corp (TIPC) chairman Wu Chung-rung (吳宗榮), whose resignation was provisionally accepted yesterday.
After construction of the bridge was completed in 1998, it was turned over to the Keelung Port Bureau — the predecessor of the TIPC’s Port of Keelung — Wu told the Legislative Yuan’s Transportation Committee in Taipei.
State-run TIPC was created in 2012, but since then the bridge was only inspected “that one time” by Taoyuan’s Chien Hsin University of Science and Technology, he said, referring to an inspection commissioned by the Yilan County Government and carried out by the university in 2016.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
Of the 17 bridges under the company’s jurisdiction, one is the Nanfangao Bridge, three were built last year, five have been inspected and eight have never been inspected, he said.
The company is to inspect the eight bridges, all of which are in central or southern Taiwan, within three months, he said.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said that he had accepted Wu’s resignation.
Photo: CNA
While he has accepted the resignation, the company “has its own administrative procedures that we must also respect,” Lin said.
“Right now, our top priority is to ... deal with the aftermath,” he said. “No matter what the cause [of the incident] was ... we must express our apologies to the nation’s people and take responsibility,” he told the committee.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津), who is a convener of the committee, proposed a bureau under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications to integrate the management of Taiwan’s bridges.
There are 29,811 bridges in Taiwan — 3,698 managed by the Directorate-General of Highways, 2,753 managed by the Freeway Bureau, 21,526 managed by local governments, 17 managed by TIPC, 1,797 managed by the Taiwan Railways Administration and 20 managed by Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp, Yeh said.
Of the bridges, she is “more concerned” about the 21,526 under the jurisdiction of local governments, Yeh said, describing them as “untimed bombs.”
She does not want to see any further bridge incidents resulting in death or injury, she said.
Integration is needed regardless of whether a bridges’ bureau is formed, she said.
Lin said the ministry would consider the proposal.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification