Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) yesterday urged the central government to cooperate with the city government to boost the transportation volume of the Kaohsiung International Airport.
Chen told Chu Yao-kuang (朱耀光), the new director of the airport, at Kaohsiung City Hall that she hoped to increase the airport’s air routes to the US, Japan and China and raise the number of international flights to and from the airport and the number of flights between Taipei and Kaohsiung.
This would be necessary to reverse the airport’s declining passenger and cargo volume, she said.
“After the High Speed Rail was launched, the airport’s passenger traffic has been waning, which has seriously affected the development of the city’s industries,” Chen added, calling on the central government to take the imbalance in development between the northern and southern parts of Taiwan seriously.
The city government would be willing to fully cooperate in terms of renovation of the airport, she said.
The latest statistics from the airport’s Web site showed that the airport’s passenger volume — both domestic and international — dropped by 28.83 percent in 2008, while its cargo volume dropped by 13.07 percent.
Chu said the volume of traffic through the airport had grown over the past two months compared with data from the same months last year, with the help of the city government.
In other developments, the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC) agreed to continue the construction of the Gangshan South Station, the northernmost point of the city’s Red Line.
The company’s board resolved on Tuesday to continue to negotiate the construction project with the city government on the condition that the company did not suffer greater financial losses.
The project has been at a standstill since the Red Line commenced operation in April 2008. Passengers traveling on a northbound train on the line can only reach Ciaotou Station, one stop before Gangshan.
The KRTC had previously expressed reservations about the project due to budget concerns, but the city’s Mass Rapid Transit Bureau Director-General Chen Kai-ling (陳凱凌) on Tuesday held the company responsible for the standstill, saying that the city government had completed negotiations with the KRTC over the cost of the project in March last year.
Chang Chia-chu (張家祝), chairman of the China Steel Co (中鋼) — the biggest shareholder of the KRTC — also promised in January to build the station, Chen Kai-ling said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods