Taipei Department of Urban Development Commissioner Lin Jou-min (林洲民) yesterday said that he would inform the police to take action against Farglory Group if it bypasses due procedure to resume work in the Taipei Dome complex.
With reference to a ceremony on Wednesday led by Farglory chairman Chao Teng-hsiung (趙藤雄) to mark the resumption of work at the Dome, Lin said there was no such thing as “resuming construction.”
The Taipei High Administrative Court last month said that Farglory is not permitted to resume construction, but merely to “perform work” on areas that pose public safety risks.
The ruling states that safety concerns about the Dome include its mass, buoyancy created by elevated groundwater levels, corrosion and the risk of collapse.
The ruling states that the city government and Farglory should identify the work that needs to be conducted to resolve safety issues, so Farglory should submit a work plan to the city and wait for a review board to grant permission before starting work, Lin said.
The commissioner said that if the company skips proper procedure, it would be in violation of Article 93 of the Building Act (建築法), which stipulates that a contractor should not arbitrarily resume work on a suspended project.
Those who violate the article face a prison term of one year and a fine of NT$30,000, he said.
Lin said that as supervisor of the construction, he would instruct the police to stop Farglory should it attempt to skirt the rules, while he would document breaches of the regulations.
If the firm continues to break the rules, the police would be brought in, Lin said.
Underlining the legitimacy of a work suspension order the city issued, Lin said that 90 percent of the work on the Dome has deviated from the construction plan.
A revised construction plan is languishing in review by the Taiwan Architecture and Building Center, which has denied Farglory a request for a construction license change needed for work to resume, he said.
“I do not believe that any of the 80,000 city government employees, including myself, could, should and would mess around,” Lin said, responding to criticism from Chao that he should “stop messing” with the project.
In related news, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said that he would adopt a “softer” tone in his interactions with Farglory — for example by asking it not to make decisions impulsively and asking whether it needs assistance with Dome issues.
“Perhaps adopting a softer tone rather than waiting sternly for it to apply [for a license change] would be a better approach,” Ko said.
This is meant to “calm everyone down,” Ko said, adding that the feud between Lin and Chao would not help resolve problems.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift