The government will complete a review within three months of what it has achieved in preventing flooding in the past eight years, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday.
With a flood prevention budget of NT$80 billion (US$2.7 billion), the government has achieved a certain degree of success in preventing flooding during natural disasters under an eight-year project, but it will invite experts and academics to assess its efforts and issue a report in three months to answer doubts about effectiveness of the efforts, Ma said in a Facebook post.
The president was referring to a government initiative to allocate NT$80 billion over eight years from 2006 to improve drainage facilities in regions prone to flooding.
Ma made the statements after visiting the Central Emergency Operation Center in New Taipei City (新北市) on Friday to be briefed on measures taken by cities and counties around the nation to minimize damage brought by Typhoon Usagi.
Ma had a video conference with nine local government chiefs during the visit, in which officials from Tainan and Chiayi brought up the issue of budgeting for flood prevention.
Questions have been raised about government work in flood prevention, fueled by reports of flooding and mudslides after almost every major typhoon.
Two typhoons caused serious flooding in Keelung in the north and parts of central and southern Taiwan last month.
A recent National Audit Office report found that over half of the nation’s cities and counties had failed to properly improve or maintain their drainage systems with government funding last year.
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