The names of the officials to be held accountable for last month’s collapse of the Nanfangao Bridge (南方澳橋) are to be announced before the end of the year, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday.
Taiwan International Port Co has submitted a report on the Oct. 1 accident in Yilan County’s Suao Township (蘇澳), which killed six people and injured 12, along with a list of personnel to be reprimanded, Lin said on the sidelines of forum on smart logistics in Taipei.
Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Huang Yu-lin (黃玉霖), the company’s acting chairman, declined to approve the report and asked the company to revise it.
Photo: Chiang Chih-hsiung, Taipei Times
“The investigation was incomplete, as the company focused on the accident and failed to mention when it took over management of the bridge from the Yilan County Government. We need to make sure those overseeing the takeover process are held accountable as well,” Lin said.
Asked when a replacement bridge would be built, Lin said the Directorate-General of Highways and CECI Engineering Consultants are working on the design.
Civil engineers who worked on the Suhua Highway Improvement Project would be dispatched to work on building the new bridge, he added.
“We have confidence in the quality and design of the new bridge. We hope that the new bridge will not only help bring the residents’ life back to normal, but that it will also help boost the tourism industry in Nanfangao, a town known as an offshore fishing base,” he said.
The company has planned to spend three years building the bridge, Lin said.
The collapse has made the ministry rethink the role of the Port of Suao, as a large portion of the port’s hinterland has not been developed, he said.
In related news, the company announced that the last part of the surface of the fallen bridge has been removed and put into storage in one of the port’s warehouses, so boats can freely navigate the area.
Turning to smart logistics services, Lin said the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ (MOTC) board of science and technology developed an agenda for a Dec. 3 conference that is open to representatives of the logistics industry.
“We hope, through the development of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, big data analysis and uncrewed vehicles, that we can enable the nation to offer top-notch logistics service through highways, railways, airports and seaports,” Lin said.
The MOTC has been monitoring the development of the online-to-offline service model, and Chunghwa Post, along with the nation’s airports and seaports, is prepared to offer smart logistics service, he said.
All these projects need private sector investment and the government would ensure that such investments occur in a legal environment, Lin said.
“Taiwan has a high Internet penetration rate, which creates a favorable environment in which to develop online-to-offline service. The experience we have gained so far in the logistics industry can be exported to the New Southbound [Policy] countries and help us expand the market there,” he added.
The launch of 5G service next year would present an opportunity to further develop smart logistics service, he said.
The ministry has planned to spend more than NT$42.2 billion (US$1.39 billion) on developing the smart logistic service, using a total of 285 hectares of land in seaports, airports and the Chunghwa Post Logistics Park in Taoyuan, Lin added.
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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