Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday ruled out calling a national meeting on inclement weather and water conservation following a series of devastating natural disasters.
Wu said he did not think a national meeting would resolve any problems, adding that the government’s disaster prevention efforts had shown some positive results.
“The key lies in everybody fully cooperating with the central government,” Wu said.
“Many lives can be saved if people evacuate when they are told to do so,” he said.
The impact of any natural disaster or man-made error can be minimized if both the central and local governments, as well as policy-makers and front-line workers, are sensitive to changes in the situation and are decisive in their actions, he said.
Since Taiwan has learned many painful lessons from natural disasters over the years, Wu said he believed it was most important to make the right decision at the right time.
The premier made the remarks in response to media inquiries about the possibility of calling such a meeting.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) wrote in its editorial yesterday that a responsible government should put aside partisan interests and invite experts and academics in meteorology, water conservation, geography, engineering and rescue and relief to discuss how to more effectively integrate and utilize limited resources and build useful flood prevention facilities.
On the matter of the Suhua Highway, which was severely damaged amid the heavy rainfall brought by Typhoon Megi last week, Wu said he expected an environmental impact assessment for a highway improvement project to be approved by the end of next month.
Wu dismissed allegations that decision-making on the project had been perfunctory, saying the administration decided in October last year to scrap the original plan to build a freeway and instead improve the quality of the existing highway.
He declined to speculate when work on the improvement project would begin, but emphasized that it was likely to proceed more smoothly and quickly than the original plan to build a freeway.
Wu said he understood why the former Democratic Progressive Party administration had decided in 2003 to build a freeway, but the plan had met strong opposition from environmentalists.
Their objections had halted the construction project, which was originally set to begin in 2007, he said.
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