Several Miaoli County politicians, including County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻), yesterday defended the controversial Dapu Borough (大埔) development project as “beneficial to the community” and accused “outsiders” of inciting protests against it.
“I was born and raised in Dapu, my family’s house was among those being expropriated and I am fully supportive of the project because it’s going to bring prosperity to the community,” Jhunan Township (竹南) Council Speaker Lin Shu-wen (林樹文) told a press conference at the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus office at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday morning.
“As much as 98 percent of landowners representing more than 900 households in the area have all agreed to the project. Why would they support it so much if it’s bad?” Lin asked
Photo: CNA
Dapu Borough Warden Cheng Wen-chin (鄭文進) added that all locals are supportive of the project and that none of the protesters are local residents.
“We Dapu residents are all celebrating the project, not a single person is opposed to it. Which of those who are protesting the project are from Dapu? Not even one,” Cheng said. “All of us in Dapu, in Jhunan and in the whole of Miaoli County support our commissioner.”
Dapu Self-Help Organization spokeswoman Yeh Hsiu-tao (葉秀桃) rebutted the remarks in a telephone interview.
“I don’t know what they are talking about. Every member of the self-help organization is a resident of Dapu, and all the members of the Youth Alliance for Miaoli are natives of Miaoli, if not of Dapu,” Yeh said.
She said that of course, if looking purely at the paperwork, local politicians can claim that the vast majority of local residents are supportive of the project.
“The truth is, most of the residents didn’t know they could say ‘no,’” Yeh said. “All of us received official letters from the county government some years ago asking us to provide our agreement [to the project] by a certain date, otherwise we could lose our right to receive compensation.”
“This is why, although a lot of residents are opposed to the project, they still returned their letters of agreement. They were afraid that they would lose everything if they didn’t do so,” she said.
Peng Hsiu-chun (彭秀春), another Dapu resident who opposes the project and whose house was forcibly demolished, also challenged the idea that no local residents are opposed to the project.
“Besides, I want to say that there’s nothing wrong with having people from elsewhere help us out,” Peng said in a telephone call. “This is not just a problem for Dapu. Such a tragedy could happen anywhere if the mechanism doesn’t change.”
Meanwhile, during the press conference, Liu rebutted allegations that he has “played tricks” to preserve houses belonging to his family while many houses in the future high-speed rail station development zone were flattened, so as to enjoy a boost in their value.
“We changed the land classification from ‘for farming’ to ‘for construction’ as early as 1979, so it has nothing to do with the high-speed rail station development project,” he said.
He also refuted allegations that he was able to repay NT$50 million (US$1.6 million) in debt within a year of taking office as county commissioner because he was involved in corruption.
He said he was able to clear his debts by selling land owned by his family.
Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan would issue a decision at 8pm on whether to cancel work and school tomorrow due to forecasted heavy rain, Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said today. Hsieh told reporters that absent some pressing reason, the four northern cities would announce the decision jointly at 8pm. Keelung is expected to receive between 300mm and 490mm of rain in the period from 2pm today through 2pm tomorrow, Central Weather Administration data showed. Keelung City Government regulations stipulate that school and work can be canceled if rain totals in mountainous or low-elevation areas are forecast to exceed 350mm in
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
COUNTERMEASURE: Taiwan was to implement controls for 47 tech products bound for South Africa after the latter downgraded and renamed Taipei’s ‘de facto’ offices The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still reviewing a new agreement proposed by the South African government last month to regulate the status of reciprocal representative offices, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. Asked about the latest developments in a year-long controversy over Taiwan’s de facto representative office in South Africa, Lin during a legislative session said that the ministry was consulting with legal experts on the proposed new agreement. While the new proposal offers Taiwan greater flexibility, the ministry does not find it acceptable, Lin said without elaborating. The ministry is still open to resuming retaliatory measures against South
1.4nm WAFERS: While TSMC is gearing up to expand its overseas production, it would also continue to invest in Taiwan, company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has applied for permission to construct a new plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區), which it would use for the production of new high-speed wafers, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council, which supervises three major science parks in Taiwan, confirmed that the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau had received an application on Friday from TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to commence work on the new A14 fab. A14 technology, a 1.4 nanometer (nm) process, is designed to drive artificial intelligence transformation by enabling faster computing and greater power
RSS