“On Nov. 3, we informed ASR that if it failed to respond to us before Nov. 10, we would take care of the vessel ourselves but they would have to pay the bill,” Tao Tzu-li said.
After rounds of talks, the bureau finally signed a contract with a maritime engineering firm on Dec. 30 to remove the vessel.
“The harbor bureau signed the contract wit the company, and it said that it would start working on Jan. 17, but I haven’t seen anything started yet,” Syaman Womzas said during a telephone interview on Jan. 22. “The weather is fine down here these days, I don’t know what’s the concern.”
Tao Tzu-li said the contractor had not violated the contract.
DISCRIMINATION?
“We only asked it to start as soon as possible and didn’t set an exact date,” he said.
“The only thing we asked was that the task should be completed within 60 days,” he said.
“This is really a simple matter, I don’t know why the government is handling it this way,” Syaman Womzas said.
He said the Ocean Pollution Control Act (海洋污染防治法) provided an emergency response mechanism in cases such as this, in which the government would be authorized to immediately remove a vessel that could potentially harm an ecosystem and then ask the responsible party to foot the bill later.
“If they had done that in the first place, it would’ve been much easier, because it wouldn’t have broken in two and sunk,” Syaman Womzas said. “Sometimes I wonder if the government would have handled this situation in the same way if this platform ship had sunk inside Keelung or Kaohsiung Harbor?”
RSS