Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) told Typhoon Morakot survivors yesterday that the government would not resume a controversial water diversion project before it is convinced that the construction did not contribute to a massive mudslide that wiped out a village in Kaohsiung County in August.
“We consider it necessary to invite credible international institutions to make a further assessment of any possible links [between the construction project and the mudslide] before we decide whether to resume work,” Wu said at a press conference.
The Executive Yuan held the meeting to brief the public on reconstruction progress in typhoon-affected areas half a year after Morakot left more than 600 people dead and missing, about 500 of whom lived in Siaolin Village (小林村), Kaohsiung County, and were buried by a massive mud slide.
A recently issued report by the private Chinese Institute of Civil and Hydraulic Engineering and commissioned by the Public Construction Commission blamed the tragedy on record rainfall and not the project, which many survivors consider the main cause of the mud slide.
Wu said the government “respected” the assessment findings but that the report alone would not form the final basis for the government’s decision on the project.
The project was designed to channel 600,000 tonnes of water from the Laonong River (荖濃溪), in Kaohsiung County, to the Zengwun Reservoir (曾文水庫) in Tainan County.
“For one thing, Siaolin villagers and people who care about land and water conservation found the assessment report unacceptable … The government cannot disregard their views,” Wu said.
Wu also said that Water Resources Agency Director-General Yang Wei-fu (楊偉甫) told him that he had inspected the regions and found that there have been dramatic changes in the geography, geology, and geomorphology since the typhoon.
“[Yang said] there were stockpiled soil and gravel deposits of about 30m to 40m in the upstream areas and that the changes might prevent the water diversion project from having its anticipated effect,” Wu said.
Wu said that the government held a cautious attitude in dealing with the issue and would not resume construction without an assessment supported by typhoon victims.
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,