The Taipei Department of Urban Development yesterday said that a construction company’s demolition of a privately owned building was carried out in accordance with legal procedures as part of a private urban renewal project approved by the Taipei City Government.
Pacific Construction Co on Friday sent three excavators to a site on Tingzhou Road (汀州路), and in just two minutes tore down a house owned by Luo Chin-kuang (羅進光).
The urban renewal project involved 80 landowners, and Luo was the only one to oppose to it.
Photo: Hsiao Ting-fang, Taipei Times
All the other homes had already been demolished.
Luo had previously said that his house’s location had been determined according to feng shui principles, and that demolishing it would bring Taiwan bad luck.
Luo emerged from his home at noon and, kneeling down, he read from a prepared statement, pleading to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) to help protect his land.
He said that he would not file any charges against the construction company.
Department head Lin Jou-min (林洲民) told reporters that the demolition had been carried out lawfully on a permit issued by the city government in April last year.
Citing the Urban Renewal Act (都市更新條例), Lin said that the project was approved after gaining the backing of 60 percent of property owners who together owned more than two-thirds of space allocated for the project.
Contractors for urban renewal projects should reach agreements with all stakeholders because tearing down homes could lead to social unrest, Lin said.
At a separate setting, Ko, who has previously met with Luo, said that he was surprised to learn that Luo did not know of the demolition in advance, “and I did not know it either.”
While the city had issued a demolition permit to the construction firm, “I would expect them to talk to the home owner before flattening the house,” Ko said, adding that he would try to come up with a solution that is acceptable to everyone.
“If he [Luo] insists, we could try to find a way for him to have peace of mind in designing the building,” Ko said.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS