The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) yesterday failed to reach agreement on compensation for the 18 people killed in the Puyuma Express derailment on Oct. 21 last year, as victims’ families were not happy with the amount offered by MOTC Minister Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍).
Yesterday’s meeting was Lin’s first with the family members since he took office on Monday last week. Ministry officials have met three times with the families.
Lin offered a compensation package of NT$13.2 million (US$427,392) per victim, about 20 percent more than the Taiwan Railways Administration’s (TRA) offer of NT$10.75 million, not counting the NT$100,000 in emergency funds given to the families shortly after the accident.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The TRA had based its offer on the settlements reached after the derailments of an Alishan Forest Railway train in 2004 and a 2007 commuter train in Yilan County’s Dali Township (大里), which were NT$9.5 million and NT$9.6 million respectively, and taking into account an inflation rate of 13 percent since 2008.
“I need to strike a balance between the demands of the victims’ family members and the responsibility of government workers,” Lin said. “Government workers like to settle such disputes in court, because it is the easiest way out, but the process is often time and money-consuming.”
“Whatever they admit now would be held against them in lawsuits as well,” he said.
The families were dissatisfied with the findings of the Executive Yuan’s investigation into the derailment and the administrative penalties handed down to three former TRA director-generals over the incident, Lin said.
He said he was also not satisfied with the Executive Yuan’s investigation and would continue to hold officials accountable for the accident.
The derailment of the Puyuma Express was more serious than the 2007 Dali derailment, he said.
That the TRA’s remote surveillance system had not been connected to the derailed Puyuma Express train showed the incident was more than just an individual problem, but a long-standing one at the agency, he said.
New Power Party Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), who spoke on behalf of the families, said he was not satisfied with the TRA’s offer.
Under the Consumer Protection Act (消費者保護法), the final compensation figure could be three times the TRA’s offer if the agency admitted the accident was due to its negligence, Huang said.
The TRA had insisted on dispatching the train that derailed despite knowing the day before that the train’s air compressors were out of order, Huang said, adding that the incident was different from the 2007 derailment.
The government seeking restitution from the Japanese manufacturer of the train as well as former director-generals was a good idea, as victims’ families should not have seek such compensation on their own, he said.
Yesterday’s meeting ended with the ministry pledging to support the families’ request to reopen the accident investigation by the soon-to-be-established transportation safety board.
The ministry was also asked to respond by Thursday next week to alleged discrepancies found in the train inspection records as well as in internal TRA messages.
The Executive Yuan should quickly form a TRA reform taskforce following a comprehensive evaluation of the agency, the families said, adding that the three former director generals — Frank Fan (范植谷), Chou Yung-hui (周永暉) and Jason Lu (鹿潔身) — should face Control Yuan investigations.
The Yilan District Prosecutors’ Office should disclose the records of communications between the train driver and TRA control center personnel, the families said.
The ministry should also disclose its recorded conversations with the driver when he was under investigation, by Thursday next week, they said.
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