The Control Yuan is due to question four high-ranking incumbent and former officials today about construction defects in the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant and charges that contractor China Shipbuilding Corp (
Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆), Atomic Energy Council (AEC) Vice Chairman Chiou Syh-tsong (邱賜聰), Taiwan Power Company's (Tai-power, 台電) former president Lin Ching-chi (林清吉) and China Shipbuilding's former general manager Chiang Yuan-chang (江元璋) are scheduled to be questioned.
Control Yuan member Huang Wu-tzu (黃武次) yesterday said in a news release that he, along with his colleagues Chao Chang-ping (趙昌平), Chao Ron-yaw (趙榮耀), and Leu Hsi-muh (呂溪木), have gone through related documents and government papers and will begin the interrogation today.
According to Huang, Control Yuan members will investigate how the government takes bids for construction work, how contrac-tors and subcontractors fulfill their contracts and how construction contracts for the nuclear plant were allocated to the subcontractors.
The interrogation will also touch on administrative mistakes made by officials involved, Huang said.
Last month, after construction defects in the plant were reported by the media, the Control Yuan formed a four-person task force to probe the allegations.
After a one-month review of related documents and government papers, the task force found that nine of 32 samples taken from the pedestal had defective materials.
In addition, there's a 20cm-long crack in the plant's reactor pedestal, according to a report released by Huang.
"The quality of construction work on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant appears to have drawbacks," Huang said.
In addition, Huang cited media reports that said China Shipbuilding may have improperly benefitted from a commission during the process of subcontracting construction work.
"They apparently did shoddy work, but the related government agencies are not aware of that or pretended it does not exist," he said.
Not long after the allegations came to light, the Ministry of Economic Affairs released the names of officials to be given demerits over the flaws. Twenty-two of officials are from Taipower and China Shipbuilding.
China Shipbuilding subcontracted New Asia Construction and Development Corp to build the pedestal.
The punishments, in the form of demerits imposed on Taipower by the ministry, drew immediate media criticism, as not a single high-ranking official has been asked to step down over the errors.
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