Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was met outside the Taipei City Council yesterday afternoon by several environmental advocates urging the city to terminate the contract with Taipei Dome contractor Farglory Group (遠雄集團).
About a dozen people held a banner that read: “Farglory Group has violated the law and breached the contract, when will Ko-P [Ko’s nickname] terminate the contract?” when Ko arrived.
The Taipei Dome project was halted in 2015.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
Although Ko said in 2016 that the city government would temporarily hold off on terminating Farglory’s contract, it seems as if the company has secretly continued construction work, because the dome’s roof looks almost complete, Songshan Tobacco Factory Tree Protection Union convener Arthur Yo (游藝) said.
Ko stopped to accept the protesters’ petition before continuing into the city council, but did not respond to their questions.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate hopeful Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) and KMT Taipei city councilors Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇), accompanied by Farglory Group spokesman Jacky Yang (楊舜欽), visited the Dome construction site on Tuesday.
The work underway at the site is simply maintenance and repair, which a court ruling gave the company permission to do, Yang said during the visit.
The cost of rust removal, structural repairs, parts replacement and other maintenance done over the past three years is about NT$1.7 billion (US$58.2 million), Yang said.
He said the company has not ruled out the possibility of asking the city government to compensate it for that money.
Meanwhile, several city councilors grilled Ko and Deputy Mayor Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻) during the council meeting about Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Co general manager Wu Yin-ning’s (吳音寧) qualifications for the job.
Neither Ko nor Chen could give an answer.
KMT Taipei City Councilor Chen Yi-chou (陳義洲) swore when he stormed up to the podium to questioned Department of Urban Development Commissioner Lin Jou-min (林洲民) on illegal residential units in Neihu District (內湖).
Ko said a task force would be formed to negotiate with residents.
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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