Premier William Lai (賴清德) yesterday helped break ground on the Central Taiwan Science Park’s Erlin Township (二林) campus in Changhua County.
Aimed to form a pool of smart machinery and biotechnology businesses, the development project for the campus was proposed by the Ministry of Science and Technology and was finally approved by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) in May, following 10 years of controversy.
The Executive Yuan has allocated NT$36.3 billion (US$1.18 billion) to develop the 631-hectare campus, which has attracted 12 businesses ready to outlay a total of NT$60 billion, Lai said, calling on the county to accelerate its industrial transformation.
Photo: Chen Kuan-pei, Taipei Times
Almost as large as the Hsinchu Science Park, the Erlin campus would become a platform for firms developing smart machinery and aeronautics in central Taiwan, said Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee (陳良基), who joined Lai for the occasion, alongside Changhua County Commissioner Wei Ming-ku (魏明谷).
Chen said he expects the campus to create 6,000 jobs.
A plan by the county to develop an industrial park for precision machinery in the same township encountered opposition from environmentalists as an EPA committee met for a second-stage environmental impact assessment in Taipei yesterday.
Development projects that might entail more of an environmental impact than usual are required to undergo a second-stage assessment, which imposes stricter standards than the regular assessment.
The 352-hectare site would accommodate businesses that work with ICs, smart machinery, photovoltaics, biotechnology and green energy, the county government said in a report.
The county should keep its promise of restricting industrial clusters to northern Changhua while allowing agriculture to thrive in the south, including Erlin Township, Changhua County Environmental Protection Union president Shih Yueh-ying (施月英) said.
Erlin is listed as a region having a high risk of soil liquefaction and flooding, she said, citing the serious damage caused by heavy rainfall and flooding in July.
Demand for industrial land keeps growing, and is expected to increase to 2,211 hectares by 2020 and 3,311 hectares by 2036, a Ministry of Economic Affairs official said, expressing support for the development plan.
However, Tamkang University economics professor Liao Huei-chu (廖惠珠) questioned the project’s necessity, saying that many industrial land tracts for sale in the region have failed to attract buyers due to a lack of interest.
The committee asked the county government to provide more documentation by Nov. 30 on the estimated business occupancy, water use and disaster prevention, among other requirements.
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