The government is pressing for unprecedented mass relocation of residents in high-risk areas to head off any future problems with flooding and mudslides after coming under fire for its slow response to Typhoon Morakot last month.
The central government, still reeling from the deadly typhoon that hurt the reputation of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), aims to relocate 60 unsafe communities to avoid future storm damage, a disaster official said yesterday.
The 60 southern communities of several dozen to more than 1,000 households will be asked to move to new locations to avoid the sort of landslides that buried parts of villages following Morakot from Aug. 7 to Aug. 9, Public Construction Commission Deputy Minister Chern Jenn-chuan (陳振川) said.
Relocation will start with about 4,000 people left homeless.
“Otherwise, the next time a typhoon comes along, the government will bear responsibility,” Chern told reporters in an interview. “A lot of people want this done pretty fast.”
Taiwan’s population, the world’s 15th-densest, has pushed too far into the mountains and built too intensively for safety, claimed Chen Hung-yu (陳宏宇), a National Taiwan University geoscience professor.
An extra NT$30 billion (US$926 million) from the annual central government budget has been allocated to help with relief work following the worst storm to hit the country in 50 years, Chern said.
That figure brings the total disaster relief budget to NT$150 billion.
Authorities cannot force villagers to move and have not set a relocation timetable, Chern said.
“If they live in a really dangerous place, we would need to keep negotiating,” he said.
But the government expects to win widespread support by offering jobs, quality homes free of cost and the resettlement of entire villages, including trademarks of the Aboriginal culture that dominates much of the disaster-prone mountains, he said.
One high-tech firm will introduce organic agriculture in resettled communities with a pledge to raise their household income by an average of 15 percent, he said.
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