More than a dozen groups protested in front of the Executive Yuan and the Legislative Yuan yesterday against the Cabinet’s proposed NT$60 billion (US$2 billion) six-year special budget for flood control and prevention, saying that it is nothing but a scheme to win votes.
“We are against the government spending our money as it pleases,” and “The government is good at securing votes, but bad at flood control,” representatives from the groups and dozens of Changhua County residents chanted at the protests, as they urged the Cabinet to review the results of previous flood-control projects before allocating more money.
“We are worried that the NT$60 billion six-year special budget will be a drain on the government’s budget,” Taiwan Alliance for the Protection of Water Resources spokeswoman Chen Chiao-hua (陳椒華) said.
Photo: CNA
The six-year proposal was submitted by the Ministry of Economic Affairs last week. The Cabinet’s current NT$116 billion eight-year Flood-prone Areas Management Plan finishes at the end of the year.
Chen said her group is also concerned that the proposed budget and the announcement of national land plans would make it easier to change land-use designations and to win approval for development projects, and may result in expanded development projects near reservoir catchment areas.
“The special budget does not need to be passed right away. We urge the legislators not to rush to pass it, but to hold public hearings to hear differing opinions,” she said.
Taiwan Tree Protection Alliance convener Chang Mei-hui (張美惠) said that extreme weather has caused about 80 percent of the annual rainfall to precipitate only during rainy seasons, causing floods in rainy seasons and droughts at other times, so they are not against flood-control policies.
However, she said her group disapproves of the funding for local farm irrigation associations, which do not have the expertise to deal with floods.
Wu Li-hui (吳麗慧) of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union’s Changhua Office said that land subsidence is a very serious problem in Changhua, and the National Science Council has allocated billions to the Changhua Farm Irrigation Association to resolve the problem.
“We are against passing this huge budget and giving it to agencies that have no flood control expertise at a time when the government is in financial difficulties,” she said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods