Free emissions standards testing will be not be available to scooter drivers next year in order to allocate part of the air pollution control fund to other uses, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Minister Chang Juu-en (張祖恩) said yesterday.
In order to encourage riders to have their scooters examined, since 1997, the EPA has allocated part of an air pollution control fund for the subsidy. Riders have been exempted from paying the NT$80 for annual scooter emissions tests.
However, an emissions subsidy for more than 7 million riders consumes NT$560 million annually. EPA officials said that the favor to scooter riders might not be fair to drivers who are using other kinds of vehicles.
"Based on the spirit of "polluters pay," we do think the limited air pollution fund should be used wisely and fairly," Chang said yesterday at the Legislative Yuan.
The EPA has announced a new regulation, saying that beginning this year, newly purchased scooters would not necessarily be examined for the first three years. Officials said that the measure was created in order to decrease the burden on scooter riders to take emissions tests.
Yesterday, Chang also brought up a new proposal that would allocate about 10 percent of the air pollution control fund to ease the government's burden of financial losses from the national health insurance program.
According to the EPA, this year the air pollution control fund will be about NT$2.8 billion, including NT$1.5 billion from factories and NT$1.3 billion from riders, and drivers from all other kinds of vehicles.
From the fund, about NT$900 million will be allocated to local authorities for carrying out air pollution control measures. EPA officials said that they can spare 10 percent of the remaining NT$1.9 billion, which is nearly NT$200 million, to solve problems pertaining to financial losses from the existing national health insurance program.
However, legislators bashed the EPA's idea, saying that the money would be wasted.
"I don't know how you can justify the idea. In fact, using less money toward the prevention of air pollution might cause more illnesses for more people, who will then need to use more medical resources," Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Winston Dang (
Dang said he worried that the EPA might do other similar things in the future, such as sparing resources for the control of water pollution. According to the Cabinet's Department of Health, Taiwanese people consume NT$400 billion in medical resources annually. Dang's colleagues, including DPP Legislator Lu Tien-lin (盧天麟) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hou Tsai-feng (侯彩鳳), share the same opinion.
"The health officials have to solve the problems of the national health insurance program's huge financial losses. For example, we are going to need strategies to prevent the abuse of Taiwanese people living in foreign countries," Hou said.
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