Kaohsiung County Commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興) yesterday called the Cabinet “unreasonable” after it demanded that the county repay a NT$1.5 billion (US$47.7 million) loan from the central government for emergency relief after last year’s flooding within two years.
Yang told reporters in Kaohsiung County that the county recently received an official notice from the Executive Yuan and the Ministry of Finance about the two-year term limit.
The central government will take the installments directly from the monthly administrative funds the county receives from the Executive Yuan, Yang said.
Yang described the central government's move as “unreasonable,” saying that demanding a quick repayment would contradict the central government's humanitarian relief efforts last year.
The county suffered serious landslides after days of torrential rain brought by Typhoon Morakot in August last year.
A great number of Aboriginal households in the county's mountainous areas were damaged by mudslides, including Siaolin Village (小林), which was completely wiped out, killing more than 500 people.
Yang said the county government had spent the majority of the funding on disaster relief, adding that the central government should review whether the county had spent the money appropriately instead of asking the county to repay it.
Yang said that although the central government had earmarked NT$8.8 billion in total to help the county with reconstruction work, a substantial gap remained between the budget and the actual amount of money the county needs.
In related news, Kaohsiung City's Bus Service Administration director Ou Hsiu-ching (歐秀卿) yesterday urged Yang's campaign office to modify a negative advertisement aimed at Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) and the city’s high unemployment rate.
Yang and Chen are both eyeing the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) nomination for mayor of Greater Kaohsiung — a merger between the city and the county — in November's special municipality elections. They have been trading barbs for months.
Ou said the administration believed the ad was “inappropriate” because advertisements running on the city's buses should convey a positive message.
In response, Lee Tien-fu (李添福), chief executive officer of Yang's campaign office, said the administration might have violated administrative impartiality by trying to block the advertisements.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching