The Ministry of Economic Affairs should revoke a mining rights extension granted last week to Asia Cement, legislators said yesterday, accusing the Bureau of Mines of seeking to preemptively circumvent a freeze on new extensions.
“Even though proposed amendments to the Mining Act (礦業法) have not yet been passed, granting mining rights extensions is still a matter of executive discretion,” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) told a Taipei news conference with Citizens of the Earth representatives.
Amendments under consideration by the legislature’s Economics Committee would require all mines to undergo an environmental review process before being granted mining rights extensions.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The committee this week passed a resolution to freeze approval of new extensions for six month while the bill is being reviewed.
The bureau on Tuesday last week granted a 20-year mining rights extension to Asia Cement — the nation’s second-largest cement producer — for a controversial Hualien County mine, DPP Legislator Su Chih-feng (蘇治芬) said, adding that the approval was “unprecedented” given that the firm’s mining rights were not set to expire until November.
“The Bureau of Mines worked behind our backs to hide the truth and protect the firm, even though it knew there would be a committee meeting on amendments this week, including a discussion on freezing new approvals,” Su said.
“Currently, mining rights continue as long as the government does not deny an extension application, so putting the firm’s extension on hold for six months would not have caused it any losses,” DPP Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) said.
“It would also be easy to cancel the extension order because there would be no need to provide compensation for damages,” she said.
“While the ministry has already approved the extension for the mining area, we believe that this should not automatically entail approval for other aspects of the extension process, such as the actual mining site,” said DPP Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬), a co-convener of the Economics Committee, who added that he would hold a hearing on the issue next week.
“We cannot accept this extension, and we also cannot accept the Bureau of Mines director-general continuing in his post,” he said.
New Power Party Legislator Kawlo Iyun Pacidal, an Amis, said the consent of local Aboriginal communities should be sought before any extension is approved.
Citizens of the Earth researcher Pan Cheng-cheng (潘正正) said the vast majority of Asia Cement’s mining area is on public land within Aboriginal “traditional areas.”
Meanwhile, Asia Cement yesterday denied claims that it would continue mining in Taroko National Park.
It stopped mining in the park at the end of last year and it is now helping the government restore the environment, the company said a statement.
It also said the 20-year license extension it received last week was legally obtained.
Additional reporting by Kuo Chia-erh
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods