The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday called on the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC) to halt construction of the city's mass-transit system and let the Ministry of Transportation and Communications take over the troubled project.
They also asked Premier Frank Hsieh (
"The construction project is similar to the Pachang Creek incident [in 2000, which claimed the lives of four workers when rescuers failed to arrive in time]," said KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順). "Acting Kaohsiung mayor Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭) should apologize to the public for poorly supervising the project and the premier should resign and await investigation into the matter."
The project's latest sinkage took place on Saturday at the intersection of Jhongjheng Road and Jhongshan Road. It marked the ninth cave-in since the construction project began last year.
A serious collapse happened last week at the intersection of Jhongjheng Road and Tashun Road. The subsidence resulted from the construction of a reservoir well in the area, which suddenly experienced massive water seepage.
Huang, who chairs the KMT's ad hoc commission of inquiry that is investigating the KRTC scandal, said that Hsieh should be held fully responsible for the scandal because he is the one who asked the KRTC to speed up the construction process in a bid to "get credit and win himself a ticket to run in the next presidential election."
She also requested that prosecutors launch a probe into whether any government officials have colluded with construction companies on the project.
Since the latest cave-in took place near the city's Formosa station, independent Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) said that it sends out an alarming signal to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration.
Kaohsiung was a key location in the nation's democratic movement as the site of the Kaohsiung Incident, also known as the Formosa Incident, in which police cracked down on a peaceful rally to mark Human Rights Day. The Dec. 10, 1979 event is generally recognized as an important turning point in Taiwan's democratization.
Chiu yesterday criticized Hsieh, who served as Kaohsiung mayor for six years, for lacking the courage to tell the public the truth and to inform the media that he was going to tour the cave-in site on Saturday.
In response, transportation authorities yesterday said that it is not typical to halt a construction project for a probe, and that the transportation ministry cannot take over the project because it is not the supervisory body for the city's subway system.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip William Lai (
"If the KMT really wants to help, they should do their job as a responsible opposition party and help the construction project continue rather than asking them to stop," he 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