Farmers who had their land expropriated by the government for development projects yesterday protested a draft act to facilitate industrial development, expressing concern that the bill could turn the government into a tool of large corporations.
“The government compensated us with a little over NT$9,000 per ping [3.3m²], when our farmland was expropriated, but the published real estate price is more than NT$40,000 per ping,” Wang Wan-ying (王婉盈), a farmer from Taichung County whose land was taken over by the government to be made part of Central Taiwan Science Park, said at a press conference at the legislature.
Wang said she was also concerned about her family's future.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
“Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) may want to lower the unemployment rate by creating more industrial parks, but taking land from farmers is killing us — what are we going to do without land?” she asked.
“It’s ironic that my family was one of the farming families trained by the government in advanced agricultural techniques, because now it’s the government that’s destroying our livelihood,” Wang said, while displaying several awards to her family for excellence in agricultural production.
Wang’s family is not an isolated case.
Farmers from Miaoli, Changhua, Hsinchu and Hualien counties whose land was also expropriated for either industrial parks or resorts joined Wang in her protest.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) said that the newly developed industrial parks were the result of the Act for Upgrading Industries (促進產業升級條例), which expired at the end of last year.
However, the government has drafted an act on innovative industries — which also includes clauses authorizing governments to help expropriate land for certain business investments — as an extension of the expired law.
“Thousands of hectares are still unused in previously completed industrial parks, so the government has no reason to take more land from farmers until all the previously expropriated land has been put to good use,” Lin said. “I suspect that the government is doing so not for the public interest. Rather, they are doing so in the interest of large corporations and real estate developers.”
The Alliance for Fair Tax Reform, which supports the farmers, agreed and cited the project to move the Taipei Detention Center in Tucheng City, Taipei County, as an example.
According to the plan, Taipei County Government will expropriate 126 hectares of land to build the new Taipei Detention Center; however, the detention center would only take up around 10 to 20 hectares. The rest would be turned into residential and commercial districts.
“Such a case is not an isolated one, rather, it is just one example of how the government and corporations work together to exploit the disadvantaged,” the alliance said.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS