Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) was grilled by the Legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday as legislators questioned the appropriateness of granting the Directorate General of Highways (DGH) director two merits for repairing transportation infrastructure damaged by Typhoon Morakot.
The award came to light after the lawmakers received a letter from “a group of rational DGH workers.”
The letter said the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Water Resources Agency sent an official notice to the DGH in June to remind them that the Shuangyuan Bridge’s (雙園大橋) pile footings were exposed. The DGH did not act on it until July 15th, when it sent officials to inspect the site. The letter said the DGH did not close the bridge, even though it knew there could be safety concerns. The bridge collapsed during Typhoon Morakot.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) did not punish officials for the losses caused by the bridge’s collapse. Rather, DGH director Lin Chih-ming (林志明) received two merits from the MOTC.
Mao admitted that he had approved the award, adding that under Lin’s management, many damaged roads became accessible before the designated deadlines.
Lawmakers from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), however, challenged Mao over the award.
KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) said standard operating procedures authorized the DGH to close the bridge at night or when its condition was unclear. The Water Resources Agency had also reminded the DGH to heed the warnings about the safety of the bridge.
“Now the director general of the Water Resources Agency had to step down, but the DGH chief bagged two merits on his work record,” Lo said of the irony.
DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) said the prize was unconscionable.
“Four cars fell into the river and five people are still missing,” Yeh said. “You can imagine how the family members must have felt when they found out about this award.”
In response, Lin said that when the DGH inspected the Shuangyuan Bridge in July, 3m of the bridge’s pile footings were exposed, but standard operating procedures said bridge closure wasn’t necessary until 6m of pile footings were exposed.
Lin said that the DGH would review the standards used for bridge closures.
A survey of young Taiwanese showed that only 36.5 percent of men and 19.6 percent of women believe marriage is important, a trend that academics say is key to the nation’s low birthrate. Yang Wen-shan (楊文山), an adjunct research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology, yesterday announced the 12th round of results from a longitudinal survey of attitudes among young Taiwanese toward markers of adulthood. While few of the respondents, who were aged 28 to 32 when surveyed in 2017, found marriage to be important, 95.8 percent believed that being responsible for oneself should take precedence, data showed. Economic independence came in
SHRINKING FEMALE POPULATION: Last year, 107.74 boys were born for every 100 girls in Taiwan, which is a greater gender imbalance than in Japan and South Korea The Ministry of the Interior recorded 9,601 births in January, the first time the nation has produced fewer than 10,000 newborns in a single month, while different indicators showed that Taiwan might also be facing a population with increasingly fewer births, women and marriages. It comes after the ministry reported a record low 165,249 births last year, which was lower than the 173,156 deaths recorded last year. The nation experienced negative population growth for the first time last year, ministry data found. The number of births in January also dropped from a year earlier, when there were 12,510 births. In February, there were
The Hualien District Prosecutors’ Office has listed six people as suspects in a judicial investigation into a fatal train crash on Friday last week. Fifty people were killed and more than 200 were injured when the Taroko Express No. 408 train slammed into a crane truck that had slid onto the tracks near the entrance of Cingshuei Tunnel (清水隧道) in Hualien’s Sioulin Township (秀林). The office also summoned six officials at the Taiwan Railways Administration’s (TRA) Hualien Engineering Section for questioning about alleged illegal business operations and unsafe work conditions by Yi Hsiang Industry Co and Tung Hsin Construction Co, the two
KEEPING FOCUSED: Premier Su Tseng-chang was said to have commended Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung, but said the tragedy takes priority Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has submitted a verbal resignation in the wake of the Taroko Express No. 408 train crash two days ago, Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) said yesterday. In a call, Lin told Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) that he wished to step down, to take responsibility for the deadliest accident involving a Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) train in 40 years. As of press time last night, the Hualien District Prosecutors’ Office had revised the death toll from 51, which had been reported on the previous day, to 50, after DNA testing showed that what had
RSS