The legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee yesterday approved draft amendments to the Air Pollution Control Act (空氣污染防制法) that would enforce stricter controls on old vehicles in a bid to curb air pollution.
Mobile sources of air pollution — vehicles, planes, trains and other mobile engines — are among the major causes of air pollution and the Environmental Protection Administration has proposed amending the act to enforce stricter emission standards for vehicles more than 10 years old.
Owners of about 5 million two-stroke motorcycles and 76,000 large diesel-powered vehicles that are in compliance with the first and second-stage emission standards would be directly impacted by the proposed amendment if it passes a third reading.
A modification to the act’s Article 36 would give the government the authority to tighten emission standards for vehicles more than 10 years old.
Owners could face a fine of NT$500 for not undergoing regular vehicle inspections and an additional fine of NT$1,500 if the vehicle has not been inspected or has failed an inspection after a month.
Another fine of NT$3,000 would be imposed if the vehicle is not inspected or fails an inspection after six months.
If a vehicle owner continues to ignore the local government’s request to improve the vehicle’s emissions within a given period of time, the local Motor Vehicles Supervision Office would have the power to withdraw the vehicle’s license.
The draft amendments also propose allowing local governments to ban old vehicles from driving in certain areas, and those contravening such bans would face a fine of between NT$500 and NT$60,000.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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