A coalition of labor and environmental groups yesterday protested outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei to demand that the government pass laws requiring factory owners to inform the government, fire departments and area residents of hazardous chemicals stored at their factories.
The protest began an hour after the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee began a meeting to review current policies on chemicals control and disaster prevention in the wake of last month’s fire at a Chin-Poon Industrial Co factory in Taoyuan that killed six firefighters and two Thai employees.
Representatives of the National Association for Firefighters’ Rights, the Migrants Empowerment Network in Taiwan (MENT), the Green Citizens’ Action Alliance and other groups called on the government to increase protection for firefighters, people living near chemical factories and the environment.
Photo: CNA
Last month’s fire took a heavy toll on the Taoyuan Fire Department because the firefighters were given limited information on the hazardous chemicals stored at the factory before going inside, association advisor Cheng Ya-ling (鄭雅菱) said.
“Although the Ministry of the Interior has promised to increase inspections of factory chemicals, it has not explained how it could possibly do so given that fire departments nationwide face a personnel shortage estimated to be at 50 percent,” she said.
The majority of firefighters are overworked, given 360 to 480 hours a month with a schedule of “a 24-hour shift every other day,” or “a 48-hour shift after every rest day,” she said.
“How could the government carry out more safety inspections without further overworking them, especially in areas with lots of factories such as Taoyuan and Hsinchu?” Cheng said.
Besides finding ways to improve factories’ management of their chemicals, the government should also require factory owners to inform fire departments of hazardous substances in their factories and their locations, as well as sending personnel to assist firefighters at the scene, she said.
“Factories should be fined if they fail to do any of the above and they should be subject to criminal penalties if a fire causes deaths,” Cheng added.
Fires at factories in the past several months have killed not only firefighters, but several migrant workers, MENT representative Wu Ching-ju (吳靜如) said.
Migrant workers should not be living in dormitories connected to factories, she said.
“Those forced to live at factory complexes continue to be exposed to dangers they face at work. This also increases the risks for firefighters, who must rescue those trapped in dormitories,” Wu said.
The government must work with local communities to establish detailed criteria for determining what information regarding public hazards factories should be required to give to nearby residents, including lists of hazardous substances stored at such facilities, Green Citizens’ Action Alliance deputy secretary-general Hung Shen-han (洪申翰) said.
Residents have the right to know and the Environmental Protection Administration’s Toxic and Chemical Substances Bureau should establish a mechanism to give the public access, he said.
“I hope the government can understand what firefighters, migrant workers and residents who live near factories really need,” National Association for Firefighters’ Rights secretary-general Chu Chih-yu (朱智宇) said.
“When government officials show up for the firefighters’ memorial service on Thursday, they should come with concrete plans for reforming chemical control regulations, not vague promises,” he said.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching