The Ministry of the Interior should hold public hearings before approving the expropriation of land to take Tainan’s railway line underground, activists said yesterday, adding that the government had failed to respond to their concerns.
Members of residents’ self-help organizations were joined by student activists as they shouted that there would be no peace without justice.
“We are extremely hopeful that the new government will take action for land justice,” said Chen Chih-hsiao (陳致曉), a spokesman for one the self-help organizations, adding that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) had made the issue one of the themes of her presidential campaign.
“I hope Tsai and [Premier] Lin Chuan (林全) mean what they say about land justice: Our case is a clear example of ‘rotten’ expropriation under Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] stewardship,” he said, taking aim at Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) of the DPP.
“Our case will also be first major city planning case they will approve after taking office — so if they intend to realize their promises, they should start with us,” he said.
Current plans, which are awaiting final approval from the ministry, call for demolishing more than 400 houses along 8km of railroad to facilitate tunneling efforts, drawing criticism over the permanent expropriation of more than 4 hectares of land.
Chen said that requiring the ministry to hold hearings on land cases was necessary to remedy an “absurd” review process controlled by government officials intent on approving development projects.
“There’s no way for us to appeal and government officials themselves are the ones who conduct the review process,” he said, saying that both the Tainan City Government and a ministry sub-committee had failed to address self-help organizations’ concerns about the necessity and equity of moving the rail line east as part of tunneling efforts, as well as the necessity of permanently expropriating land.
“The only way for there to be a truly fair dialogue is if government officials are obligated to provide information on request,” he said. “Many land expropriation plans have run into a common problem in the past: The government pretends not to hear you and there is no way to appeal.”
Green Party Taiwan policy director Chen Yu-chi (陳郁琦) said that Lai has previously passed the buck on hearing residents’ complaints, saying that the Tainan City Government was cooperating with the central government in expropriating land.
“Now that there has already been a change in ruling parties, the DPP cannot avoid this question anymore,” she said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,