Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday announced a “zero-tolerance” policy toward new illegal constructions.
“I’m going to say this clearly: From now I do not permit Taipei to have new illegal constructions — this is my command,” Ko said in response to comments by Taipei Construction Management Office Director Kao Wen-ting (高文婷) at a weekly city government meeting with borough wardens.
In response to the wardens’ demands that the office tear down a structure in a fire lane, Kao said that the structure was on a low-priority list of “existing” illegal structures that appeared before 1994.
She added that the office was already overwhelmed by the volume of “new” construction that had continued to appear after 1994.
She said the office faces a backlog of more than 26,000 “new” illegal construction cases, with about 1,000 additional cases added to the backlog every year.
“I agree with the principle of a ‘statute of limitations,’ but new illegal construction keeps popping up — you can’t say there’s no way to handle this,” Ko said.
“We can’t allow illegal construction to continually occur and then say that we don’t have enough people to take care of it,” he said, adding that in the long term, the “downward spiral” of not enforcing construction rules would deprive the government of “dignity” and people’s trust.
He ordered the office to draft new plans to stifle the emergence of new illegal construction, including taking measures to prevent businesses from being operated from such premises, even if the city lacks the resources to immediately demolish them.
Construction Management Office Deputy Chief Engineer Chiu Ying-che (邱英哲) said there was no legal foundation for closing down businesses operating in illegal structures, which are typically add-ons to legal structures.
He added that increasing funds and resources to demolition efforts would likely lead to increased “antagonism” from the owners of illegal structures and would be difficult to get past the Taipei City Council, whose councilors often advocate for the owners.
Ko has been riding high on the success of a previous campaign against illegal rooftop construction, which he initiated shortly after taking office in December last year.
The city successfully compelled the occupants of 226 such structures to demolish or “improve” their premises by removing potential rental rooms in time for the city’s deadline last month.
Ko’s handling of the cases has met widespread approval, with a Ming Chuan University poll released earlier this week showing 87 percent of city residents approved of his handling of the issue.
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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