The increasing number of municipal construction projects that are to be completed by November has raised concerns from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilors who say that the city government rushed the projects to use them as campaign tools for Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) ahead of the Taipei mayoral election.
Of the 350 major municipal construction projects completed during Hau’s four-year term, 40 percent will be completed at the end of this year, according to information provided by Taipei City’s Secretariat Office.
A closer look at the information shows that of the 140 projects due to be completed this year, 41 percent are to be finished in the three months prior to the November mayoral election.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
“As the Taipei mayoral election approaches, the number of construction projects to be completed has increased. Obviously the city government adjusted the completion dates of the projects to give Hau the opportunity to promote them ahead of the election,” DPP Taipei City Councilor Wu Su-yao (吳思瑤) said.
The sports center in Wenshan (文山) District, for example, was launched last month. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Hau both attended the opening ceremony, and Ma, a former Taipei mayor, used the occasion to tout Hau’s performance and boost his support at the event, she said.
DPP Taipei City Councilor Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) and Chou Wei-you (周威佑) joined Wu in questioning the city government about the rushing or delaying of projects, and expressed concerns about the quality of the projects.
Hsu criticized the city government for its handling of several problematic major municipal projects, including the Maokong Gondola, the Wenshan-Neihu MRT Line, the Xinsheng Overpass project and the Taipei International Flora Expo.
Hsu also urged the Hau team to ensure construction quality is not sacrificed for the sake of Hau’s personal election campaign.
“Mayor Hau should skip all the ribbon-cutting ceremonies and instead use the time to oversee the construction projects,” she said.
Huang Ming-tsai (黃銘材), chief secretary of Taipei City’s Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, said all major construction projects took about three to four years to complete, and any adjustments of the completion date, especially construction delays, would have to go through the commission and cross-departmental meetings for approval.
He said the city government followed municipal procedures for the supervision of major construction projects. He added that it’s not easy for departments or contractors to change completion dates and denied any connection between the construction projects and the mayoral election.
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,