Control Yuan members yesterday called for a major overhaul of water resources administration to avoid cases of rice contaminated with heavy metals.
In a report released yesterday, Control Yuan member Cheng Jen-hung (程仁宏) and two of his colleagues identified five major flaws that they said led to frequent cases of contamination.
The Control Yuan members demanded better cooperation among agencies charged with pollution control and effective enforcement of rules to clamp down on such pollution as they said that the Cabinet-level National Council for Sustainable Development had failed in its role of coordinating policies.
As a case in point, the report said the Ministry of Economic Affairs did not have concrete plans to follow through on a policy that prohibits factories from discharging industrial wastewater into irrigation ditches.
Separately, the Control Yuan yesterday adopted a resolution to censure the Ministry of Economic Affair’s Industrial Development Bureau, the Environmental Protection Administration and the Council of Agricultural Affairs (COA) over industrial waste.
Control Yuan member Chien Lin Hui-chun (錢林慧君) launched an investigation into the matter following a food scare case in March in which industrial-grade copper sulfate had been added to pig and poultry feed.
The Environmental Protection Administration and the Industrial Development Bureau were charged with negligence in establishing effective control measures for waste disposal and recycling and in carrying out the regulations. Control Yuan members alleged that the COA did not protect consumers after the food scare emerged.
Meanwhile, the COA was also censured by the Control Yuan over its handling of the outbreak of H5N2 avian influenza early this year.
Former Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine director Hsu Tien-lai (許天來) and COA Deputy Minister Wang Cheng-teng (王政騰) were impeached by the Control Yuan for allegedly trying to cover up the case earlier this month.
The Control Yuan approved a motion proposed by Control Yuan member Huang Huang-hsiung (黃煌雄) to censure the Department of Health for failing to establish a rotation system for superintendents at its subordinate hospitals.
The lack of such a mechanism failed to limit the power of the superintendents, many of whom have allegedly been involved in procurement irregularities, Huang said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods