The Taoyuan City Government yesterday implicated former deputy county commissioner Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文) in the deaths of six firefighters after a fire in a bowling alley in Sinwu District (新屋).
Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) accused Yeh of holding a special meeting on April 2 last year to help the owners of the plot of land on which the bowling alley was built circumvent regulations on land use, adding that the land had been registered for agricultural use.
At the meeting, it was decided that any decisions regarding the land would be made by the department of agriculture instead of the bureau of urban development, Cheng said.
A report was changed to say that the building was not public property, Cheng said.
The decision was an error and it indicated administrative laziness among civil servants in the then-county government, Cheng said.
The contents of the meeting must be looked into and laid open for public scrutiny, Cheng added.
There might have been mistakes made by the past administration, but we must face facts and not seek to cover them up, Cheng said, adding that the city government would fully cooperate with investigations.
“Every mistake that is uncovered in the investigation will become the basis for government’s reforms,” Cheng said.
Cheng said that the Sinwu case involved an illegal construction built 20 years ago that had in the past year been flagged for a joint inspection, but the case had not been handled properly.
The problem clearly does not lie with any individual public servant, but with the local administration of the time, Cheng said, adding that a new government is expected to correct the mistakes of previous governments.
According to preliminary investigations by the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office, a then-county official surnamed Chang (張) and a Sinwu District Office official surnamed Cheng (鄭) have been accused of colluding over the construction of the building and are in custody.
The Department of Agriculture said it had alerted the Department of Public Works that the construction was in violation of regulations and should be prioritized for removal, but the district office said it had been awaiting further investigations.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS