DPP makes public draftpost-reconstruction bill

The DPP's legislative caucus yesterday made public the draft of a special law for reconstruction in regions affected by the Sept. 21 earthquake, which they said was designed to ensure the efficiency of the work under the six-month emergency decree announced late last month; and especially to guarantee that each of the tens of thousands of people made homeless by the quake are provided with a "warm home."

"What we want to do is to provide a warm home for each homeless person. No matter how humble such a home might be, it will become a point from which they can restart their lives," DPP legislative caucus convener Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) said. "Only after affected families are resettled can they start thinking about how to enjoy themselves like the rest of the people on the island."

DPP lawmakers submitted the special draft law to Premier Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) yesterday in an attempt to get both his and the KMT's support for its passage.

"Our party started thinking of creating special laws for post-quake reconstruction after President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) announced the emergency decree on Sept. 25," said Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄), one of the bill's architects.

Shen's colleague, Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄), pointed out three major considerations.

"The first was that we wanted the special law to make up for the insufficiencies of the emergency decree," Chang said. "The emergency decree, which is a constitutional right of the President, was announced without the support of any laws. It is no more than an administrative order. We also hope the special law will help ensure that the reconstruction work is conducted efficiently by a well-coordinated administration," he said.

He added that the emergency decree entitles the government to allocate "special funds" for post-quake rehabilitation and reconstruction work.

"The distribution of funds for this purpose needs to be supervised. Our special law is designed with such a function in mind," he added.

The DPP draft bill also features provisions for concrete measures meant to solve major technical issues related to post-quake reconstruction, including how to distribute relief funds fairly to affected families and how to settle the disputes surrounding the mortgages of those families whose houses collapsed or became uninhabitable after the quake.

"To be fair to everyone, the special law will prevent recipients from benefiting from different aid packages offered by the government at the same time," Shen said.

"For instance, a person who is smart enough might be eligible for a subsidy of NT$3,000 for each family member if he chooses to rent a house instead of accepting a pre-fabricated housing unit provided by the government," Shen said.

"The person may also be eligible for subsidies for up to five years before he needs to apply for a low-interest or interest-free bank loan to buy a house.

"The special law will require people to choose what kind of aid package they want, so that they don't take advantage of two benefit packages simultaneously" he said.

Shen also wrote into the draft a formula which he said would help solve the hotly-contested issue over how homeless people should repay the mortgages on their houses.

He proposed that if people are willing to give up the ownership of land on which their collapsed houses sit, they should be eligible for monetary compensation based on a reduction of 80 percent of the remaining mortgage amount at 70 percent of the market value of the house before it collapsed.