Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday defended the government's relocation policy for areas threatened by natural catastrophes and denied it had forced victims of last year's floods and mudslides to leave their hometowns against their will.
“The relocation policy is both ideal and practical. The government fully respects the victims,” Wu said.
The Taiwan Aboriginal Tribes Action Alliance, a coalition of groups of victims of Typhoon Morakot, accused the government on Sunday of forcing the victims to move out of their native land.
“The government never considered the lifestyle of Aborigines when drawing up its reconstruction policy. [The government] has resorted to all sorts of tactics to forcibly relocate [the victims], including designating [their hometowns as] dangerous areas, building houses to relocate the victims, passively repairing infrastructures [in the areas hit by the typhoon] and blocking reconstruction work at Aboriginal land,” the alliance said in a press release.
Morakot triggered massive flooding and mudslides in August last year, killing 619 people and leaving 76 unaccounted for.
Wu said the government would relocate residents living in dangerous areas only if they agreed to do so.
For those who refuse to be relocated, Wu said the government would only evacuate them before a natural disaster.
Wu said some Aboriginal activists who did not live in areas devastated by the typhoon had spoken out against the government’s relocation policy to preserve the Aborigines’ unique lifestyle.
The good intentions of government and civic groups could be misinterpreted as malice because of that “obsession,” Wu said.
Wu also dismissed speculation that a government planned subsidy to encourage small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to hire new employees was meant to help bring the unemployment rate to below 5 percent by the end of the year.
The Executive Yuan said on Sunday it would earmark NT$900 million (US$28.3 million) to encourage SMEs to hire personnel.
The government plans to grant companies NT$10,000 per month for every new employee the firms hire for a period of six months.
The Chinese-language United Daily News said the measure was proposed to save Wu, who said he would step down if the unemployment rate failed to drop below 5 percent by the end of the year.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers said the subsidies were part of a scheme to ensure that Wu stayed in power.
“He's trying to break past the 5 percent using these measures,” DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said, adding that the premier was the only person who would benefit from the program.
“Everything they are doing to lower the unemployment rate is not to solve the root of the problem, but instead it's all to protect Wu’s position,” she said.
Wu said the government had decided to postpone implementation of the plan until January to prevent the media from making “false accusations.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY VINCENT Y. CHAO
TRAFFIC SAFETY RULES: A positive result in a drug test would result in a two-year license suspension for the driver and vehicle, and a fine of up to NT$180,000 The Ministry of Transportation and Communications is to authorize police to conduct roadside saliva tests by the end of the year to deter people from driving while under the influence of narcotics, it said yesterday. The ministry last month unveiled a draft of amended regulations governing traffic safety rules and penalties, which included provisions empowering police to conduct mandatory saliva tests on drivers. While currently rules authorize police to use oral fluid testing kits for signs of drug use, they do not establish penalties for noncompliance or operating procedures for officers to follow, the ministry said. The proposed changes to the regulations require
Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan would issue a decision at 8pm on whether to cancel work and school tomorrow due to forecasted heavy rain, Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said today. Hsieh told reporters that absent some pressing reason, the four northern cities would announce the decision jointly at 8pm. Keelung is expected to receive between 300mm and 490mm of rain in the period from 2pm today through 2pm tomorrow, Central Weather Administration data showed. Keelung City Government regulations stipulate that school and work can be canceled if rain totals in mountainous or low-elevation areas are forecast to exceed 350mm in
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
1.4nm WAFERS: While TSMC is gearing up to expand its overseas production, it would also continue to invest in Taiwan, company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has applied for permission to construct a new plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區), which it would use for the production of new high-speed wafers, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council, which supervises three major science parks in Taiwan, confirmed that the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau had received an application on Friday from TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to commence work on the new A14 fab. A14 technology, a 1.4 nanometer (nm) process, is designed to drive artificial intelligence transformation by enabling faster computing and greater power
RSS