The Taipei City Government would not shield those at fault if evidence proves that the Pali Sewage Treatment Plant (八里污水處理廠) illegally dumped sewage into the ocean, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday.
A report published yesterday in the Chinese-language Next Magazine said that Hui-Min Environment Tech Corp, commissioned by the Taipei Public Works Department’s Sewerage Systems Office to operate the plant, had illegally dumped sewage more than 700 times over the past three years.
New Taipei City’s Environmental Protection Department earlier this year imposed a NT$1.2 million (US$40,013) fine on the office after Hui-Min was found to have dumped sewage in April.
The report said that the city government might face a fine of nearly NT$5 billion if the pollution is confirmed by prosecutors.
“We can only respond according to the evidence, so what are the facts? We cannot accept saying things like: ‘It is said to be, maybe or probably’ — we have to see the information acquired by prosecutors,” Ko said in response to a media inquiry about the report.
“We will definitely not offer [the office] any protection, but we need to know the facts so we can deal with it,” he added.
Meanwhile, as the city’s “three vertical and three horizontal” bicycle network project is to be completed this year, a budget for bike lanes was not proposed in next year’s budget, leading some to question whether the decision was made out of concern that the construction work would hurt Ko’s re-election chances next year.
Ko said the city is not giving up on the bike lanes and would include it in a project to improve pedestrian space, which is to feature integrated planning of roadside trees, street lights and sidewalk tiling.
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,