Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) suggested yesterday that the government impose fines of up to NT$30 million (US$911,854) on makers of counterfeit municipal garbage bags, saying that imposing heavy fines is the only effective way of stopping the practice.
According to Ma, Taipei City has decided to crack down on after recent spate of plastic garbage bag forgery cases.
Some of the fake garbage bags look so similar to ones made under the city government's authority that officials from the Taipei Bureau of Environmental Protection could not tell the difference between the fakes and the genuine bags at a press conference held Friday.
Speaking at another press conference yesterday, Ma said the city government has drafted a proposal that would raise fines for garbage bag forgery from the current range of NT$30,000-NT$100,000 to NT$300,000-NT$30 million and impose jail terms of 3-7 years on counterfeiters. He said the strict measures are intended to deter the illegal practice once and for all.
According to Ma, the Cabinet-level Environmental Protection Administration (環保署) has agreed to support a legislative amendment to related waste management and cleaning statutes so as to legitimize the heavy penalties for garbage bag counterfeiting.
Taipei is the first and so far the only city in Taiwan to adopt a garbage fee collection system, in which residents have to purchase the city government's official bags, the price of which includes a disposal fee.
Since Taipei's garbage collection system was implemented last July, the city's average daily garbage volume per person has dropped to 1.1kg, compared to about 3.3kg before.
The garbage fee collection system, which earns the city about NT$1.2 billion a month, has also attracted makers and suppliers of counterfeit garbage bags. According to Taipei City police headquarters, they received information on 56 cases of bag counterfeiting over the last several months and have cracked 14 of them.
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