The National Association for Firefighters’ Rights yesterday called for laws to be changed to require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and factory owners to provide on-site assistance of hazardous chemicals.
About 25 people from the association and other labor rights groups yesterday rallied outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, calling on legislators to pass amendments to the Disaster Prevention and Protection Act (災害防救法) and Fires Services Act (消防法) in the new legislative session that begins on Friday.
The association and New Power Party have held a series of forums, news conferences and a public hearing to call for reforms since an April fire at Chin-Poon Industrial Co (敬鵬工業) in Taoyuan killed two Thai workers and six firefighters.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
“The Chin-Poon fire was more than just an incident. It was a trauma that victims’ families will bear forever,” said Lin (林), sister of firefighter Lin Wei-hsi (林尉熙), who died in the blaze.
The truth about the firefighters’ deaths is still unknown, as authorities have been unable to say whether the complexes contravened safety regulations and whether firefighters were given inappropriate orders during the rescue mission, she said.
“The word ‘hero’ is too much for us. We don’t need heroes. We just want our family to be around,” she said.
During the Chin-Poon fire, the owners did not provide any floor plans or information about the locations of hazardous chemicals, hampering firefighters’ efforts, association member Lan Yu-chieh (藍毓傑) said.
The Fires Services Act should be amended to require factory owners to send representatives to assist firefighters by providing floor plans and information about stored chemicals, and those who try to deliberately conceal important information and provide false information should be fined, he said.
The Disaster Prevention and Protection Act should be amended to require the EPA to provide on-site assistance whenever the location of a fire is found to contain hazardous chemicals, he said.
Moreover, when firefighters die in a fire, the Ministry of the Interior and the Central Disaster Prevention and Protection Council should form an investigation committee, and allow representatives from the association and related groups to participate in the process, he said.
The council should also set up an online database of chemicals stored in factories across the nation to allow firefighters to quickly access such information, he said.
“In the past five years, 26 firefighters have been killed in fires. How can the government forget them so soon... Was there really nothing it could have done to prevent their deaths?” New Power Party Legislator Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said.
The party will do its best to promote the amendments and hope legislators from other parties will do the same, he said.
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