Legislators said yesterday a recent controversy surrounding a Japanese firm's winning a bid to build a waste incinerator in Ilan County for the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) showed only part of problems resulting from questionable incineration-oriented waste management policy.
Last Saturday, PFP legislator Hsieh Chang-chieh (
Hsieh said EPA head Hau Ling-bin (
Although Hau last Saturday stressed that the contract was awarded based on cost-effectiveness, professional performance and public interest, and that neither he himself nor any other EPA officials had personal involvements with the Japanese company, he was under attack by Hsieh on Tuesday at the Legislative Yuan.
Yesterday, legislators of the Sanitation, Environment and Social Welfare Committee, however, said a bigger problem behind the argument between Hau and Hsieh over the NT$2.28 billion incinerator was the incineration-oriented waste management strategies the EPA is making efforts to carry out in Taiwan.
Legislators said that there was far too much scope for corruption in the bidding process.
The EPA plan seeks to complete 36 public and private waste incinerators by 2003 to burn 30,400 tonnes of household waste per day.
"Almost all the bids in various counties for building incinerators are mired in profiteering scandals," DPP legislator Lai Chin-lin (賴勁麟) said at a press conference yesterday.
In addition, Lai said that the amount of garbage produced in Taiwan per day has dropped in the past five years, while the recycling rate is increasing. Statistically, Taiwanese produced 24,331 tonnes of household waste per day in 1997 and only 19,686 tonnes in 2001.
"Therefore, we can see some completed incinerators in some counties receive insufficient waste to burn and some have even stopped operating," said Lai, adding that about one third of total incineration capacity would be unused if all the incinerators were completed on schedule.
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