Two hundred Construction and Planning Administration (CPA)employees stood in the rain yesterday outside the Ministry of the Interior, to protest a government decision last year that will soon put them out of work.
The workers and their union representatives also submitted a petition to the ministry.
During a meeting last October, the National Asset Management Committee, which is under the Executive Yuan, decided to scrap the public construction fund through which money was allocated to the heavy machinery division of the CPA, which has been in charge of disaster aid.
When that decision takes effect in January, the 200 employees of that division are scheduled to be laid off.
"We submitted the petition to CPA two days ago," Chen Chiu-chuan (
The ministry oversees the CPA.
According to the union, outsourcing machinery and labor for disaster aid operations is a commercial decision, and that in the past such contract decisions have often been tainted.
"The CPA insists that in the budget set-aside for next year, disaster aid work will be done through outsourcing to civic contractors," the union said in a public statement.
"For many years, outsourced disaster aid projects have often led to corruption," the union statement said.
The heavy machinery division was founded in 1964 as the first heavy machinery unit for national road construction projects.
Since 1998, the division has become an important tool in disaster aid.
The division has assisted in the government's response efforts after the 921 Earthquake in 1999, Typhoon Nellie, which re-sulted in serious flooding in Taipei, and the recent Tropical Storm Mindulle.
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