The Taipei City Government will revise river dredging plans, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday.
“Even though funding might be the same, dredging plans will change to focus on allowing boats to enter and exit docks,” Ko said, adding that previous dredging of the river channel had not had any effect.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) yesterday reported that the city government had spent NT$250 million (US$8.09 million) over the past 10 years on river dredging as part of plans to promote tourism through boat rides on the Tamsui River (淡水河), which courses through the Taipei Basin.
More than 80,000 people took the river tours last year, according to Department of Transportation figures.
Chen Juin-hong (陳俊宏), section head of the department’s general transportation section, said that even the river tour line’s small boats have to carefully coordinate departure times with tides to avoid being stranded.
He denied a media report that more than 60 percent of river line passengers were schoolchildren on field trips, saying that while the city government covers the tickets of schoolchildren, they make up only 6 percent of passengers.
He added that while the business of the private line operators licensed by the city was “poor,” the city government did not require them to report profit figures.
Chen said the city government has already approved a new river tour route along the city’s Keelung River (基隆河) between the Xikou (錫口) and Guandu (關渡) docks. Operation is scheduled to begin by the end of the year pending city approval of the boat being constructed by the line’s operator, he said.
Hydraulic Engineering Office Director Chen Shyh-haw (陳世浩) said his office had not attempted to make the Tamsui River passable at all times due to the prohibitive cost that would entail and that he would review dredging operations following Ko’s directive.
Nipah virus infection is to be officially listed as a category 5 notifiable infectious disease in Taiwan in March, while clinical treatment guidelines are being formulated, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. With Nipah infections being reported in other countries and considering its relatively high fatality rate, the centers on Jan. 16 announced that it would be listed as a notifiable infectious disease to bolster the nation’s systematic early warning system and increase public awareness, the CDC said. Bangladesh reported four fatal cases last year in separate districts, with three linked to raw date palm sap consumption, CDC Epidemic Intelligence
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The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
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