Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators from Taichung County yesterday spoke in support of Vice Premier Tsai Ing-wen (
"Tsai made a phone call to the committee because the committee was behind schedule in publishing the result of the assessment," the legislators said.
The committee released a statement on Monday which said that Tsai telephoned one of its members, Robin J. Winkler(
The committee accused the government of sacrificing the environment for the sake of economic development.
Tsai on Tuesday denied that was the case, saying that she had just called to find out when the result of the assessment would be completed.
Kuo Chun-ming (郭俊銘), one of the legislators supporting Tsai, said the committee should have released the result 50 days after it received the environmental impact statement from the project's developer.
"Since the Provisional Office of the Central Taiwan Science Park filed the statement last October, the committee should have released the result last year," he said.
"The committee has postponed the result for about 100 days," he said.
Asked to comment, Kuo said that some members of the committee had intentionally delayed the result because they were opposed to the project.
Kuo added that the vice premier's phone call had nothing to do with putting government pressure on the committee.
Legislator Tsai Chi-chang (
The legislators said that they admired the committee's stringency regarding environmental protection and hoped the result would be released soon.
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