Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday said that the bidding process for the Taipei Twin Towers project near Taipei Railway Station had been conducted in a transparent and open fashion, despite sustained accusations about the fairness of the process. Hau added that the Taipei City Government would act in accordance with the law if any illegal activity was uncovered.
The integrity of the bidding process for the towers, which could generate more than NT$170 billion (US$5.8 billion) in profit once completed, has been challenged since a multinational consortium composed of Taipei Gateway International Development, Malaysia’s IGB and Mid Valley City won the contract to develop two high-rise buildings in October.
The Chinese-language Next Magazine yesterday said that Chang Shyue-kung (張學孔), a non-paid adviser to the Taipei City Government, had accepted NT$10 million from Kagawa International Investment, a major shareholder of Taipei Gateway International Development, to write a development proposal for the project in 2009.
Chang, a civil engineering professor at National Taiwan University who has served as an advisor to the city since 1994, also advised the corporation about the project and would receive a bonus of as much as NT$80 million if the city government formally signed the contract with the consortium, Next Magazine said.
Hau said the city government reported the allegations to prosecutors and the city’s Government Ethics Department would also look into the project.
“The bidding process for the project is open and transparent, and we will handle any violations of the contract in accordance with the law. The project is a major investment and we welcome the public to examine it using the highest standards,” he said.
Taipei’s Department of Rapid Transit Systems yesterday dismissed the latest accusation and said there was no conflict of interest in the case because Chang was not in the project review committee.
BES Engineering has also questioned the qualifications of the former director of the Bureau of High Speed Rail, Wu Fu-hsiang (吳福祥), as a member of the committee reviewing the selection of the developer, saying that Wu, a former adviser to Kagawa International Investment, helped the multinational consortium secure the contract.
The consortium is expected to break ground for the construction of the two buildings within one year.
The project is scheduled to be completed in 2017, and the twin towers will serve as the main hub for the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT line to Taipei, as well as for five other railway and MRT lines.
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