Hundreds of villagers in Dongshan Township, Tainan County, could boycott Saturday's legislative elections, saying the legislators they elected in previous polls had failed to help them oppose the establishment of two landfill sites for industrial waste next to their village, the Taipei Times learned yesterday.
According to Wu Shih-wen (
The sites cover 18 hectares and 9.2 hectares respectively. The smaller site has already been completed.
"Most of the villagers earn a living from cultivating fruit. Their livelihood might be affected if water sources become polluted by waste from landfills," Wu said.
The Dongshan Township Self-Help Association was established at the end of 2002, when the villagers learned about the proposed projects.
They sent numerous petitions to the Tainan County Government, urging local authorities not to approve the projects because some residential communities are only 200m from the proposed sites.
Since then, none of the incumbent legislators has expressed support, Wu said.
"What's the use of having the legislative elections? We want to ignore it this time, because none of the candidates have ever paid attention to us," Wu said.
More than 800 villagers are entitled to vote, with a usual turnout of about 600 voters. This Saturday, less than 50 of them are expected to vote, Wu said.
"Although we do not have many voters, we still want to speak out about being ignored by the local government, political factions and developers," Wu said.
Wu stressed that the association respects the citizens' right to vote and would not prevent anyone from casting their ballot.
"As for myself, I will definitely respect the conclusion of our village meeting and not cast my ballot," Wu said.
Wu said that, although most villagers are opposed to landfills, they welcome other development projects, such as recreation centers, which could boost local tourism.
Lee Mun-she (
"I can understand the villagers' obvious bias against `not in my back yard' facilities, such as landfills. But they have to be confident of our evaluation mechanism, including numerous meetings for environmental impact assessments," Lee said.
Geologically speaking that an impermeable geological stratum in the village made it suitable for landfills, Lee said.
Lee said that most Taiwanese companies are capable of using technologies to build advanced landfills.
"These landfill sites are for non-hazardous industrial waste. Villagers should turn their opposition into a positive attitude with a monitoring mechanism through which they can supervise the future operation of landfills jointly with the local government," Lee said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater