Legislative caucuses across party lines yesterday unanimously agreed to push forward four different versions of a draft bill designed to provide funds to meet the costs of containing the severe acute respiratory syndrome.
The legislature is scheduled to conduct the first round of cross-party negotiations today to decide whether to send one of the draft bills they agreed upon to the second reading and proceed to Friday's plenary legislative session for the third reading.
The legislature had originally planned to hold the negotiations yesterday but decided to postpone it until today.
"We though it'd be a better idea for Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) to call and preside over the cross-party negotiations instead of letting the KMT and PFP legislative caucuses take the credit and manipulate the entire process," TSU Legislator Chen Chien-ming (陳建銘) said.
The TSU has proposed a whopping NT$100-billion fund established under its own version of a SARS management decree for the prevention and control of the disease.
The Executive Yuan has proposed to earmark NT$50 billion as an emergency fund to help combat the outbreak.
To fund the project, the Cabinet plans to issue bonds and exempt the resulting debt from the amount the government can legally borrow.
According to the Cabinet's draft bill, probable or suspected SARS patients who conceal their condition would be subject to a jail sentence of up to three years or a fine of up to NT$500,000.
Health authorities at all government levels would be authorized to conduct quarantine or medical checks on specific transportation vehicles -- including their drivers, passengers and goods on board. If the owners of the vehicles reject such measures, they would receive a fine of between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000.
Media distributing misleading or unverified SARS-related information would be subject to a fine of between NT$100,000 and NT$500,000 if they fail to run an immediate correction after being notified by health authorities.
In addition to suggesting a NT$50 billion fund in its own version of the draft, the DPP has proposed to amend the Disaster Prevention and Rescue Law.
The party proposed adding epidemic prevention and countermeasures to the disaster-prevention law, saying that efficient epidemic prevention and control would require measures other than sanitary care.
The KMT and PFP legislative caucuses have proposed yet another draft bill, which would establish a special fund of NT$25 billion to subsidize medical expenses and fund aid packages to help contain the SARS outbreak.
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