A dozen representatives from a self-help association in Taitung County yesterday urged authorities not to tear down the controversial Miramar Resort Village in Taitung County’s Shanyuan Beach (杉原沙灘), to secure job opportunities for local residents.
Accompanied by Taitung County Council Deputy Speaker Chen Hung-tsung (陳宏宗) and the developer of the Miramar Resort Village project, the representatives held a press conference in Taipei to protest against a remark last week at Taitung University by Minister of the Interior Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) suggesting that the Taitung City Government should admit its mistakes in the build-and-transfer construction project.
The legitimacy of the Miramar Resort Village has been at issue for eight years and although more than 600 academics have signed a petition demanding that the construction be torn down before a new Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is conducted, many local residents support the hotel, Chen said.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
He added that the hotel was not a substantially illegal construction, but only a procedurally illegal construction.
“The majority of Taitung’s people are in support of the Miramar Resort Village,” Chen said.
He added that many residents expect the hotel to bring job opportunities and development to the area, and it is unfair to them to abort the project because of the academics’ petition and the minister’s words.
“Are you a resident of Taitung? Please do not hold back our development and progress,” self-help association chairperson Huang Chun-ming (黃俊銘) said, adding that Lee should apologize to the residents of Taitung County.
In response to the self-help group’s remarks, a civic association consisting of environmental protection groups and local residents who are against the construction said they understood the problems of Taitung’s development situation. However, the main reason for poor development in the region is that the four county commissioners in the past eight years served illegal companies by allowing them to avoid EIA procedures before starting constructions.
“The Taitung County government has announced development of the tourism industry for many years, but not even the waste water and sewage treatment facilities are completed … so the wishes of local residents have not been treated sincerely,” the association said.
It added that it is true that the government has long neglected development in eastern Taiwan, but development cannot be achieved by constructing an illegal hotel resort.
They said it was a pity that politicians would not apologize to local residents after the Supreme Administrative Court determined that the Miramar Resort Village project’s permit was invalid and ordered construction to be halted.
They added that they are not against the construction of hotels, but are against hotels being built in a geographically fragile area where the ecology can be damaged.
Even though young local people want to return to their home to work, they should be able to return to projects that are justified by law, that respect the local Aboriginal culture and that take the ocean environment into consideration, the association said.
An EIA meeting on the construction project will be held at the Taitung County Government on Saturday.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS