President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday visited areas of southern Taiwan hard hit by Typhoon Morakot two years ago, promising to complete reconstruction by early next year.
The Presidential Office had earlier canceled the visit because of the approach of Typhoon Muifa, but resumed the schedule after the Central Weather Bureau lifted its sea warning yesterday morning.
Ma first went to Siaolin (小林) in Greater Kaohsiung, one of the areas hardest hit by Typhoon Morakot, then went to the Yonglin organic farm, where Shanlin Great Love Village, the largest housing area for the storm’s victims, is being built.
Shanlin Great Love Village will house about 3,200 people once completed, and similar construction projects are under way at 39 disaster-hit locations in Pingtung, Yunlin, Chiayi, Nantou and Taitung counties, as well as in Greater Tainan and Greater Kaohsiung, the Executive Yuan’s Typhoon Morakot Post-Disaster Reconstruction Commission said.
The president also visited Majia Farm in Pingtung County, where World Vision Taiwan is building about 500 houses for about 2,500 people in the village, and spent the night with village residents.
Ma said he had visited the -disaster-hit areas 82 times since the typhoon two years ago, responding to accusations by Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), the party’s presidential candidate, that the timing of Ma’s visit was political as it fell on the second anniversary of the disaster and just months ahead of January’s presidential election.
“This is my fifth visit to Siaolin Village [sic] ... Those who make criticize me should visit the area more often,” he said.
Ma also defended government efforts to rebuild disaster-hit areas in his weekly online address, promising to complete reconstruction projects by early next year.
“Take reconstruction of Siaolin Village [sic] for example: Reconstruction is a complicated process that requires love, passion and collaboration from the government, civic organizations and local residents ... This experience will serve as a model for future disaster relief efforts,” he said.
Siaolin Village Reconstruction Association director Tsai Song-yu (蔡松諭), who was invited to tour the village with the president, said the disaster was an ongoing nightmare for many survivors two years later, adding that he expected the government to put more effort into rebuilding the village.
The storm, which struck two years ago today, caused catastrophic flooding and landslides across southern Taiwan that killed more than 700 people. More than 400 people died or went missing in Siaolin alone.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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