Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said he would file a lawsuit against the New Taipei City Government if it does not return excess payments Taipei made to subsidize its bus system.
People First Party Taipei City Councilor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) brought the issue to the fore during a city council question-and-answer session on Friday and asked Ko to demand a refund from the newly nominated Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate, New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫).
Under a bilateral subsidy program, the two municipalities issue a subsidy toward each other’s bus system every four years, but due to a difference in the average bus fare calculated by the two cities, the Taipei City Government had paid an excess of NT$86.26 million (US$2.62 million) between 2007 and 2010, Huang said.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The average bus fare calculated by Taipei during this term was NT$15.881 per ride, while that by New Taipei City was NT$15.692, which caused Taipei to pay New Taipei City residents NT$0.189 more for each time they took a bus.
Ko said that his administration has been asking the New Taipei City Government to return the excess since shortly after he assumed office in December last year, to no avail.
The difference in the calculations was a mistake by the Taipei City Government, and New Taipei City’s bus authorities have been reluctant to return the excess payments, Ko said.
He said he has not spoken with Chu personally about the issue, and probably would not have a chance to do so.
“I do not know how to reach him these days,” Ko said, referring to Chu’s presidential bid, for which he is to be on leave until the Jan. 16 elections are over.
On what he plans to do if the New Taipei City government refuses to return the money, Ko said: “We will be left with no choice but to file a lawsuit.”
Taipei Public Transportation Office division chief Huang Hsin-hao (黃信豪) said that except between 2007 and 2010, the two cities have always agreed on a single bus fare, although Taipei, with its larger number of commuters, would have to pay more subsidies.
However, that has nothing to do with the NT$86.26 million Taipei is owed, he said.
Taipei Public Transportation Office director Chen Jung-ming (陳榮明) said the two municipalities had been unable to reach an agreement on the issue.
He said his agency has asked the New Taipei City Government to propose an acceptable method of payment and a timeframe to clear the debt by the end of next month.
Additional reporting by Kuo Yi
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
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
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. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS