President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday vowed that the government would thoroughly examine the locations of underground petrochemical pipelines after a series of gas explosions in Greater Kaohsiung, suspected to have been caused by a propene pipeline leak, killed at least 26 people and injured at least 269 overnight.
Ma made the remarks in response to Greater Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu’s (陳菊) request that the central government conduct a thorough review of petrochemical pipelines buried under densely populated areas when she briefed the president on the disaster in a video conference.
“The safety threat the underground industrial pipelines pose to residents of the municpality must be factored into the way [the Ministry of Economic Affairs] manages the pipelines to prevent a recurrence of such damage,” Chen said.
Photo: Hung Ting-hung, Taipei Times
The accident yesterday was the second gas blast in the municipality in recent years. On Sept. 13, 1997, 14 people were killed and 11 injured in a gas explosion, also in Cianjhen District (前鎮), Chen said.
Chen said the pipelines should bypass densely populated areas.
Both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday announced they were calling off all election campaign activities and said that they would exert their full effort to disaster relief and reconstruction work.
Photo: Liao Yao-tung, Taipei Times
A plenary session of the legislature, which is holding the second extra session during its summer recess, went ahead as scheduled, after KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順), from Greater Kaohsiung, and KMT caucus whip Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) rejected the DPP caucus’ proposal to cancel the meeting.
DPP caucus whip Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) suggested the cancellation of the whole extra session that will run until Friday next week to review the draft bill on the proposed free economic pilot zones.
The KMT plans for the bill to clear the committee review stage next week.
The Democratic Front Against the Cross-Strait Trade in Service Agreement yesterday called on the legislature to halt its review of the bill and let government officials, mainly with the Ministry of Economic Affairs, focus on dealing with the aftermath of the disaster.
Minister of Economic Affairs Chang Chia-juch (張家祝), Deputy Minister Shen Jong-chin (沈榮津), and other officials would have to sit in on the scheduled committee meetings on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday if the draft bill is to be reviewed next week as the KMT is planning, convener of the group Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said.
Since the cause of the gas explosions has yet to be determined and Ma has vowed to look into safety concerns about underground pipelines, the legislature should not keep them from handling these pressing issues, Lai said.
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:
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