Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) yesterday defended the city’s online database of fatal accidents at major construction sites amid concerns about the impact such information might have on the sales of buildings, insisting that the database was meant to promote a safer work environment for workers.
The “Occupational Hazard Map” launched by Taipei City’s Department of Labor in January lists construction sites at which accidents occurred that resulted in at least one death or three injuries of on-site workers.
An updated version of the online map released last week further included previous records of deadly occupational accidents at all construction sites.
Taipei Deputy Mayor Chang Chin-oh (張金鶚) said the latest version of the map can serve as a reference for homebuyers to identify whether a property is “haunted” before purchasing it.
Hau yesterday said the online database was aimed at pushing for safer work environments at construction sites, and the city will continue its efforts to release related information to provide transparent information for the public.
“Whether occupational injuries or deaths on the construction sites make the buildings or apartments built on the site ‘haunted houses’ is a decision for consumers to make,” he said yesterday when attending a liver disease prevention activity in Taipei.
The city’s occupational incidents dropped 50 percent from last year since the online database was launched, according to the department.
Department commissioner Chen Yeh-hsin (陳業鑫) said the online database put pressure on construction firms and employers to make more effort to ensure the safety of construction sites and protect workers’ rights.
There have been three cases of occupational deaths at new construction sites since January, the database showed.
While the “Occupational Hazard Map” database offers information on construction sites with bad records, the other database — “Quality Construction Projects” — lists construction projects with no fatal accidents or records of construction suspensions due to safety concerns.
A total of 52 quality construction projects have been listed in the database since January.
The two databases can be found on the department’s Web site at www.doli.taipei.gov.tw.
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