A Control Yuan member yesterday described the construction of the Taiwan High Speed Rail as a “scandal” and vowed to probe the responsibility of government officials under the former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration.
“The construction of the high speed rail system is not only a failed BOT [build-operate-transfer] case, it was fraud from the very beginning,” Control Yuan member Yeh Yao-peng (葉耀鵬) told reporters.
Yeh said the Control Yuan would focus on why the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp’s original shareholders were able to undertake a project whose cost exceeds the amount they had invested.
Yeh said a previous Control Yuan investigation showed that the five original shareholders only invested around NT$30 billion (US$926 million), but had undertaken construction projects worth around NT$82 billion.
The five original shareholders are Continental Engineering Corp, the Pacific Electric Wire & Cable Co, the Evergreen Group, Teco Electric & Machinery Co and the Fubon Group.
“We cannot let this go. We need to investigate if the government neglected its duty,” Yeh said.
Fielding questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Daniel Hwang (黃義交), Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said the government would leave the investigation to the Control Yuan and prosecutors.
Wu again rebutted media speculation that Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp chairwoman Nita Ing’s (殷琪) resignation, which was confirmed on Sunday, had anything to do with the visit of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama earlier this month.
“This speculation is ridiculous,” Wu said.
He said the company had sought the assistance of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications six months ago to become involved in managing the high speed rail.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said he had talked to Ing on five or six occasions about the company’s operations and that the talks would stand up to public scrutiny.
Also See: Ou Chin-der replaces Ing at THSRC
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
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,
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