Civic groups and residents from Pingtung County and Greater Kaohsiung yesterday held a protest in front of the Environmental Protection Administration just as officials were about to hold an environmental impact assessment meeting on construction of the “Gaoping Great Lakes” (高屏大湖) as part of a water diversion project in the south.
The protesters said the 697 hectare artificial lakes, planned by the Water Resources Agency’s Southern Region Water Resources Office, would greatly affect the water supply for shrimp farming, agriculture and household use.
The Gaoping Great Lakes project, located at the border of Pingtung County’s Ligang Township (里港) and Greater Kaohsiung’s Meinong District (美濃), was initially known as the Jiyang artificial lake project, an alternative plan to the Zengwun River (曾文溪) Cross-Border Channeling project that passed an assessment in 2002.
Photo: Tsai Wen-chu, Taipei Times
However, the Jiyang artificial lake project faced strong opposition from local residents and environmentalists throughout the decade, with construction budgets having been cut many times by the legislature over the years.
The now-renamed project was bundled with a project to ensure stable water supply in the area, with planned construction costing an estimated NT$16.1 billion (US$545.5 million).
Representatives from more than 35 civic groups opposing the project said it would turn farmland about 27 times the size of Da-an Forest Park in Taipei into artificial lakes 12m deep, and 3m-to-5m dikes would obstruct the groundwater and rainwater for irrigation in the area, causing even more serious flood problems.
“It doesn’t make sense to sacrifice the lives of us local residents and pump water from the area where we live to supply water to other areas,” said You Chi-ching (尤啟精), warden of Ligang’s Jhonghe Village (中和).
Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉) said the dikes risked blocking rainwater infiltration and causing floods in Greater Kaohsiung’s Meinong and Cishan districts (旗山), as well as Ligang Township, during the rainy season.
The tapwater leakage rate in Greater Kaoshiung was about 24 percent, the protesters said, urging the agency to spend money on improving the water-channeling leakage problem in the area instead of spending billions of dollars to build the artificial lakes.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS