Residents of Singuang Borough (新光) in Taipei’s Nangang District (南港) yesterday asked Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) to buy back what they said was an illegally acquired plot of land and a flood-relief channel beside the Sinjhuang Pond (新庄埤), to protect public safety in the flood-prone area.
Carrying banners and a petition, borough residents and members of the Trees Party yesterday morning congregated in a park overlooking the natural pond about 30 minutes before Ko’s motorcade was scheduled to pass by.
However, Ko’s chauffeur drove right past the crowd and the mayor began an inspection of the No. 202 Arsenal at the nearby Guanghua Military Complex without meeting the petitioners.
Photo: Sean Lin, Taipei Times
Upset with the situation, the demonstrators followed Ko’s motorcade to the gates of the military base, with party members and several residents saying that officials in Ko’s administration had received information before the event, but deliberately drove past, so the mayor would not have to address what petitioners described as a conflict of interests.
Sinjhuang Pond Protection Alliance spokesperson Cho Chi-ping (卓基坪) accused the administration of former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) of illegal profiteering on behalf of the Chi-Sing Irrigation Association and Hsin Lu Co, a construction company.
Hau’s administration abolished a lane on the plot after saying that a flood-relief channel that runs through it “was not serving its purpose well,” Cho said.
The move allowed the association, which had authority over the lane — which was connected to a plot Hsin Lu needed for construction — to sell it, Cho said.
The lane is now fenced off with a section of the canal, which together form part of Hsin Lu’s construction site for an apartment building.
A borough resident surnamed Liu (劉) said that Hau’s administration contravened a city bylaw related to lane abolition.
According to the bylaw, the city government should have indicated which lane it intended to abolish after performing an assessment, but Hau’s administration simply identified the land on which the lane is situated and seized it, Liu said.
He said the land seizure would exacerbate flooding during typhoons.
Now that Hsin Lu owns a stretch of the channel, dredging could be impeded as the city government no longer has authority over the facility, he said.
Liu said the borough suffered severe flooding when Typhoon Nari hit in 2001, with water up to a story high and the Kunyang MRT Station entirely submerged.
The channel is the only flood relief channel connected to Sinjhuang Pond and is pivotal to protecting residents’ safety, Cho said, adding that it should not have been compromised just because of supposed insufficient capacity.
The Nangang MRT station is connected to Taiwan Railways Adminstration lines, and is set to be linked to the Taiwan High Speed Rail, Cho said.
Losses would number in the billions of New Taiwan dollars if another major flood should occur, he said.
The demonstrators called on the city government to buy back the lane and designate the plot a wetland, which would prohibit future construction.
Taipei Deputy Mayor Teng Chia-chi (鄧家基) said the city government would examine all files relating to the case to probe any possible illegality, and that it would dutifully address residents’ appeals.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
RSS