The Taipei City Government yesterday announced it will relocate the Maokong Gondola system’s damaged support pillar and reported 11 city government officials and two contracting companies to the Control Yuan and the Taipei Prosecutors’ Office for further investigation into possible dereliction of their responsibilities.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) bowed and apologized to the public for the problematic system, but declined to comment on whether or not President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the former Taipei mayor, should take some of the responsibility.
“I should take political responsibility for administrative negligence and I need to apologize to Taipei residents. I am sorry,” Hau said yesterday during a press conference at Taipei City Hall.
When asked by reporters whether or not former mayor Ma should also be held responsible, Hau refused to comment.
“I cannot answer that question for him,” Hau said.
The damaged support pillar, also known as Tower No. 16, will be relocated about 30m closer to Tower No. 17. The relocation project will be completed in about 11 months and will cost NT$21 million (US$620,000). The system could resume operations as early as the end of the year, Hau said.
The evaluation report was completed last month and it suggested that the city government relocate the damaged pillar. The city government had also completed a geology evaluation of the other 24 support pillars and installed monitoring devices under each to check on their stability, he said.
The city government yesterday also made public a report conducted by Taipei City Government’s Department of Government Ethics, which held 11 officials responsible for administrative negligence during the planning, construction and testing stages of the project.
With the exception of Department of Transportation Deputy Commissioner Lin Li-yu (林麗玉) and New Public Works Office Deputy Director Lin Chin-fan (林慶釩), no senior officials were mentioned in the report.
The report also blamed two contractors, CECI Engineering Consultants Inc and Chun Yuan Construction Co, for failing to complete geological drilling tests in accordance with the project plans.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilors slammed the Government Ethics Department for sheltering Ma, Hau and other senior officials from responsibility.
“The report blamed all the problems on junior officials. Shouldn’t the decision-makers and supervising departments, including Ma, take full responsibility for starting the project?” DPP Taipei City Councilor Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said after reading the report.
In response, Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said the decision to build the gondola had been the correct one, as it had attracted more than 5 million visitors.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
Taiwan is still in the process of assessing the possibility of recruiting workers from Eswatini, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, adding that its goal is to help Eswatini upgrade its vocational training centers. If there are plans to recruit workers from Eswatini, safeguarding national security, protecting public health and ensuring the employment rights of Taiwanese would be prerequisites, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Yen Chia-liang (顏嘉良) told a news conference. Key considerations would also include filling labor shortages in specific industries, and fostering bilateral professional and technical exchanges, he said. Yen was asked about the progress of labor
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
A US uncrewed surface vessel (USV) encountered multiple Chinese warships during an autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait, US defense company Seasats said in a statement on Wednesday. Seasats announced that a Lightfish USV had completed the first autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait. Over five days, the USV traversed the entire length of the Strait while constantly monitoring surface vessel traffic, the company said. The Lightfish encountered multiple Chinese warships, one of which was a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 056 corvette, it said. The Chinese vessels were operating “well within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone without transmitting their identity via the
RSS