President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday took the president’s administrative plane to Hualien on an inspection tour of the county’s pomelo fields that were damaged by Typhoon Fung-wong, which slammed into the east coast a day earlier.
Yesterday was the first time Ma used the presidential jet since taking office in May.
Emphasizing the importance of conserving energy and cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Ma has previously insisted on using public transportation for inspection tours. He also arranged for foreign dignitaries attending his inauguration to travel on tour buses and Kaohsiung City’s mass rapid transit system.
This approach has prompted criticism from the opposition that Ma was wasting the budget earmarked for the presidential jet.
Accompanied by Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) and other government officials, Ma said yesterday he felt “distraught” when he saw the agricultural damage Fung-wong had caused.
“An extraordinary situation must be handled with extraordinary means,” Ma said.
Acknowledging Hualien County Commissioner Hsieh Shen-shan (謝深山) for his speedy response to the storm, Ma said that the fewer restrictions there were to applying for compensation, the better.
COMPENSATION
Hualien County bore the brunt of the typhoon’s onslaught, suffering losses totaling NT$247.49 million (US$8.1 million), making it eligible for cash subsidies and low-interest loans under the country’s disaster relief laws, the Council of Agriculture said yesterday.
The second-hardest hit area was Ilan County, recording losses amounting to NT$28.64 million, the council said.
Responding to Hsieh’s estimate that the county’s agricultural losses amounted to NT$200 million, Liu said the county would receive NT$60,000 per hectare in compensation for agricultural losses.
Liu also promised to offer farmers low-interest loans of up to NT$75,000 per hectare.
The time between loan application and issuance would be shortened from 30 days to 15 days, he said.
According to the Council of Agriculture, reported losses to agricultural crops and facilities caused by Typhoon Fung-wong totaled NT$299.46 million as of 9am yesterday.
Damage to crops amounted to NT$274.48 million, with pomelos, bananas, watermelons and guavas being the hardest hit, the council said.
A total of 3,345 hectares of farmland suffered crop damage from the storm, including 926 hectares of pomelo fields, with an average of 37 percent of crops being lost.
Livestock losses amounted to NT$790,000, and forestry losses totaled NT$6.84 million, while damage to agricultural facilities reached NT$16.51 million, the council said.
MORE RAIN COMING
The Central Weather Bureau lifted the sea and land alerts for Typhoon Fung-wong at 11:30am yesterday. The typhoon was also downgraded to a tropical storm.
However, forecasters cautioned residents in central and southern Taiwan that torrential rain could be expected after the departure of the typhoon.
Rain and wind continued to disrupt the nation’s transportation systems yesterday. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications said that 47 incidents of road damage had been reported nationwide as of 1pm yesterday.
As of press time, the ministry had managed to resume traffic on 37 of the damaged provincial highways.
Close to 100 domestic and international flights were either canceled or delayed.
The South Link railway line did not resume normal operation until 11am yesterday.
EVACUATIONS
Meanwhile, more than 600,000 people were evacuated as Fung-wong made landfall outside Fuqing City in China’s Fujian Province late on Monday.
Fujian authorities evacuated 274,300 people and told 52,300 fishing boats to return to port, China’s state-run China Daily newspaper reported.
In related news, Philippine officials said yesterday that the rains and strong winds powered by Fung-wong had killed at least four people and left five missing.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHELLEY SHAN AND AGENCIES
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,