Faced with mounting public discontent over government inefficiency in post-earthquake reconstruction work, Premier Vincent Siew (
"The government has never suspended or relaxed its reconstruction efforts," Siew said during the weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday.
The outgoing premier said the government has been pushing the reconstruction work as planned since it adopted a set of reconstruction guidelines last October, following the 921 earthquake that killed over 2,400 people.
Siew yesterday assigned a number of officials from relevant ministries to visit disaster areas, to explain to victims the various ways they can go about rebuilding their destroyed homes.
He also said he hoped financial institutions would accelerate their processing of loan applications, raising the acceptance rate to 85 percent from the present 65.6 percent.
Siew's remarks were apparently made in response to recent criticism made by members of the National Alliance for Post-Earthquake Reconstruction (
Shieh Jhy-cherng (
Now that the Cabinet is set to be replaced after the KMT's defeat in the presidential race, the government's pace in pushing reconstruction has become even slower, Shieh said.
Shieh said most victims still feel helpless in many ways, and many still do not know how to apply for loans and handle related legal problems.
He blamed the situation on the lack of information from the government and on poor coordination between different government agencies as well as between the central and local governments.
Shieh said the most urgent task facing the new government will be administering a census -- set for May 20 -- of all the quake victims, to gauge what further steps need to be taken to improve reconstruction work.
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UNILATERAL: The move from China’s aviation authority comes despite a previous 2015 agreement that any changes to flight paths would be done by consensus The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday slammed Beijing for arbitrarily opening the M503 flight route’s W121 connecting path, saying that such unilateral conduct disrespected the consensus between both sides and could destabilize the Taiwan Strait and the wider region. The condemnation came after the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) earlier yesterday announced it “has activated the W121 connecting path of the M503 flight route,” meaning that west-to-east flights are now permitted along the path. The newly activated west-to-east route is intended to “alleviate the pressure caused by the increase of flights,” China’s state-run Xinhua news agency quoted China’s Taiwan Affairs Office
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