The relocation of residents from Kaohsiung’s Dalinpu Village (大林蒲), which has been plagued by heavy air pollution, is to begin in 2019, but some residents worry that the plan has no concrete details.
Dalinpu has a population of about 10,000 and is one of the six boroughs in the coastal Siaogang District (小港).
Its history can be traced back to 1661 when subordinates of Ming Dynasty general Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), also known as Koxinga, settled there. Over the past three centuries, local residents have earned their living by farming and fishing.
Photo: Chang Chung-yi, Taipei Times
Since being identified as an industrial area in 1960, the village has gradually changed into a place mainly known for air pollution and environmental protests.
The village is the site of 891 industrial exhaust stacks, which were successively erected by CSBC Corp Taiwan, China Steel Corp, CPC Corp, Taiwan and Taiwan Power Co, following the implementation of the Ten Major Infrastructure Projects by former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) in 1974.
The Kaohsiung Environmental Protection Bureau monitors 428 factories through its pollution control program, with 74 of them — mainly steelmakers, metal manufacturers and processing plants that emit sulfur dioxides and fine particulate matter — located in Dalinpu, bureau data showed.
Photo provided by the Kaohsiung City Government Urban Development Bureau
Discussion about Dalinpu’s relocation started about 25 years ago. However, not much had been done until former premier Lin Chuan (林全) in November last year visited the village and apologized to local residents for their suffering under the heavy air pollution.
The government would take immediate action to curtail air pollution and would offer favorable conditions for residents to be relocated, Lin said at the time.
The city government is to conduct the plan in three stages: conducting an opinion poll, planning work and settlement relocations and determining how the plan is to proceed from 2019 to 2022.
The residents are to be relocated to land near Hongmaogang Village (紅毛港) about 13km from Dalinpu, it said.
Now in the middle of the second stage, the city government is collecting information about local buildings, resources, history and culture; conducting health examinations among residents and assisting them to set up preparation groups.
However, some residents are worried about the progress of the plans, citing the lack of documentation.
The Executive Yuan supports the plan and is waiting for the city government to reveal more details, Cabinet spokesperson Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said.
Local residents have changed their attitude from strong distrust of the government to almost full support for the plan, which epitomizes the application of transitional justice in environmental and industrial transformation issues, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said, adding that she would implement the plan through the end of her term.
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