Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) yesterday said the government will try to give financial help to the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC), so that the bullet train project can be completed by the soonest possible date.
"It is my decision and I shall be responsible for it no matter what," Hsieh said. "Completing the high-speed railway as soon as possible is very important and the government will help this project."
Hsieh made the remarks while giving a briefing to lawmakers about the Cabinet's annual budget on the legislative floor yesterday.
"If we cannot complete the high speed rail system, it will impact other aspects of our local developments as well. It will be a serious problem for sure," Hsieh said. "Also, if the project is delayed, we will have to spend extra money maintaining the existing parts of the project anyway. It will create more of a burden."
The high-speed rail system popped up as an issue at the legislature yesterday, because the THSRC is experiencing serious financial problems and recently had to push back the target date for the project's completion a full year, to October next year.
By law, the government can invest a maximum of 20 percent of the cost of a project like the bullet train.
The government has now invested more than 12 percent of project's cost.
In response to charges that the premier may have been bribed so that he would endorse the project to the hilt, Hsieh said he wasn't worried about such accusations.
"It's not difficult to find out the truth, is it?" he said.
Meanwhile, according to Hsieh, the government is planning to spend NT$1.6 trillion (US$48 billion) in fiscal year 2006 to stimulate the economy, maintain public order and improve education.
Discussion and review of the annual budget will continue next week.
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
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
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