Former residents of the Tunghsing Building (
Quoting an investigative report from the Control Yuan (監察院) and another from the Taipei Civil Engineers' Association (台北土木技師工會), the Tunghsing Building Self-help Association (東星大樓自救委員會) said it was convinced that the collapse of the building was due to structural and design problems.
Eighty-seven people were killed when the building collapsed in last year's earthquake.
PHOTO: CHONG HUI-YEUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Wu You-min (
"The Taipei City Government hasn't really helped us. Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) just offered the media and victims an expensive meal at the Grand Hyatt hotel on Christmas Eve last year. It was paid for with donated money," Wu said.
"Attempting to excuse the tragedy, some government officials went as far as to say that shoddily constructed buildings were common all over the world," she said.
Yesterday, the association held a putu (
The association said that the government wasted NT$300,000 in donated money to cover the expense of the meal at the Hyatt, but has offered only NT$10,000 to the families of each of the victims as compensation.
In addition, it has done nothing to aid residents in filing a lawsuit against the building's contractor, it said.
In stark contrast, the Taipei County Government has provided free aid to help victims of collapsed buildings with their lawsuits and has coordinated negotiations between victims and contractors, the group said.
Reconstruction of the building can only begin after a consensus has been made among those who own land.
So far First Commercial Bank -- which operated a branch on the building's ground-level floor has not agreed to support reconstruction, the association said.
Remodelling work on the ground floor, in which vital load-bearing columns were allegedly removed, has been blamed for the building's collapse during the quake.
In response to First Commercial's inaction, the association launched protests, but Tiffany Lee (
The Tunghsing Building was constructed in 1980 by Hung Gu Construction (
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