Taipei City councilors slammed the city government's loss in a legal battle with French firm Matra over the MRT's Mucha line yesterday, saying that Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had wasted millions of dollars on that case and others involving the MRT.
Asked by the city council for an explanation, Ma yesterday gave a report on the dispute between the Department of Rapid Transit Systems (DORTS) and Matra.
After a 12-year battle stemming from the troubled first line of Taipei's MRT network, the Supreme Court in July ordered DORTS to pay the French firm NT$1.6 billion (US$48 million) for construction delays on the MRT's Muzha line. Although dissatisfied with the ruling, Ma agreed to pay the fine.
City councilors yesterday said Ma and DORTS officials had wasted money on the Matra case and legal disputes with other companies.
"DORTS has lost about NT$6 billion on lawsuits over the years ... the reasons for the legal disputes include changes to the construction design and infrastructure delays caused by the department," Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Councilor Lee Chian-chang (
Echoing Lee's comment, DPP Councilor Hsu Chia-ching (
DORTS Commissioner Chang Chi-te (
"We had differing views on construction with some contractors, and we fought the legal battles in order to win back the rights of the city government," he said.
City councilors also questioned delays in several other construction projects.
DPP Councilor Lee Wen-yin (
In addition, 38 construction projects have been delayed, Lee said.
"There are more than 400 construction sites in Taipei. Mayor Ma has only been to about 10 of them. I hope that our mayor can visit more construction sites and monitor the progress of these projects," DPP Councilor Lan Shih-tsung (藍世聰) said.
Ma said that between 2003 and August this year the city had 874 construction projects, costing more than NT$10 million, and that it has finished 534 projects so far. He said the 61 percent completion rate showed the city government's efforts, but agreed to visit more sites to monitor their progress.
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:
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