A total of 288 elementary and junior-high school buildings are still in use without the necessary permits, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said yesterday, urging the Ministry of Education and the Executive Yuan to set up a special fund for their reconstruction.
The Feb. 6 earthquake which toppled the Weiguan Jinlong complex in Tainan and damaged other buildings in the south has highlighted the problem of old, unsafe buildings, Chiang said.
“The Control Yuan in 2014 issued a correction against the Ministry of Education, saying that the ministry has not taken serious action to ensure that junior and elementary schools fulfill their legal responsibilities,” he said. “According to its statistics, as of Dec. 31 last year, there were still 315 elementary and junior school buildings across the nation without the proper building usage permits — and 288 of them are still in use.”
At Taichung’s Nanyang Elementary School — the largest school south of Hsinchu County, with 3,385 students — three buildings, built in 1950, 1971 and 1984, do not have usage permits, but are still in use, Chiang said.
He said that between 2009 and 2011 the ministry used a special fund of NT$20.13 billion (US$60.1 million) to accelerate the renovation of school buildings, during which 290 buildings were knocked down and reconstructed.
“However, from 2012 to 2015, the renovation fund was reduced to NT$2 billion per year with the Executive Yuan allocating a further NT$3 billion per year for reconstruction to be divided among 22 cities and counties,” he said.
Chiang asked the ministry to step up its oversight of schools’ efforts to renovate buildings that have no usage permits, to allot a special fund for reconstruction and to seek additional finances from businesses, “as we can see that many universities receive donations from alumni.”
Department of Compulsory Education deputy head Cheng Lai-chang (鄭來長) said that the 288 buildings are “tracked by the ministry and regular meetings are held for their management,” adding that by the end of this year, those buildings without permits that have “raised safety concerns” would be “emptied” and “banned from educational use.”
Chiang took issue with the schedule, saying that earthquakes would not wait for reconstruction work to be done.
“For old buildings that are not categorized as dangerous, what guarantees can the government offer that they are safe?” he asked, demanding that a fund also be made available for their renovation.
Allocating a special fund is within the purview of the Executive Yuan, Cheng said.
In response to media queries over whether the government would publish a list of the 288 buildings, Cheng said the issue “requires further deliberation.”
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