The failure to list amendments to the Mining Act (礦業法) as a priority bill for discussion at the legislature today is a “disgrace,” New Power Party (NPP) Chairman Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said yesterday.
The amendments to the act, first proposed in May last year, have been left untouched, despite having passed a committee review, Hsu said, adding that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators do not attend meetings on the amendments and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has refused to allow them to progress procedurally.
Hsu claimed that legislators had been bribed by political donations from Far Eastern Group chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東), whose Asia Cement Corp mine in Hualien County’s Sioulin Township (秀林) caused controversy after its permit extension expanded the mining area, as revealed in aerial footage taken by late filmmaker Chi Po-lin (齊柏林).
Chi died in a helicopter crash in Hualien County on June 10, 2017, while filming a follow-up to his documentary Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above (看見台灣).
The level of corporate influence on the government is depressing, Hsu Yung-ming said, adding that the NPP would continue to push for a second reading of the amendments at every legislative meeting.
DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said the delay had its origins in the amendments’ scattered focus.
There were too many proposed editions — 13 — and too many articles would be changed, Ker said.
The procedure itself had been time-consuming, with seven meetings held just to review the committee version, after which four meetings were held between the party caucuses, he said, adding that only the changes to 30 articles were discussed and had been agreed.
NPP and People First Party (PFP) representatives did not attend the last caucus gathering, Ker added.
In addition to the number of versions, there was no unified focus, as some amendments focused on environmental issues, while others were concerned with Aborigines’ land rights, he said.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ decision to grant Asia Cement a 20-year extension on its mining rights and subsequent litigation had further complicated matters, he added.
The NPP attempting to list the amendments first for discussion is “procedurally unsound,” Ker said, calling on legislators to do their duty and desist from pre-election political posturing.
KMT caucus whip William Tseng (曾銘宗) said that the DPP was primarily responsible for the delay, as it has the legislative majority.
Environmental sustainability and the mining rights of corporations are factors to consider, Tseng said, adding that a balance between the two must be achieved before further reviews could be conducted.
PFP caucus whip Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) said that the party had listed the amendments as a priority bill, but the DPP controls the legislative agenda and it had not listed them.
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