The seventh Environmental Im-pact Assessment Committee came under fire during its very first meeting yesterday, with environmentalists accusing its members of being heavily biased toward business interests.
Green Party Taiwan Secretary-General Pan Han-shen (
disguised
Fang Chien (方儉), secretary-general of the Green Consumers' Foundation, said that the five true environmentalists on the committee had been replaced by Democratic Progressive Party "troops" disguised as academics and experts.
These people, Fang said, intended to push through a series of controversial projects.
He said the committee would offer up Taiwan's environment to Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (
Fang said the inspiration for the funeral theme had come from committee member James Lee (
Fang said that the "rubber stamp" committee shouldn't waste public funds pretending to deliberate, and instead just go ahead and give approval to the projects.
Protesters brought baskets of flowers and read obituaries at the "funeral" demonstration, saying that "environmental assessment is dead."
professional
Members of the committee, meanwhile, were adamant that they would act according to their professionalism and conscience.
EPA Minister Winston Dang (陳重信) presided over the first committee meeting, saying that in the next two years it would strive toward professionalism, efficiency and simplicity while strengthening policy communication and its legal system.
He said that the EPA was considering commissioning private consulting companies to assess certain cases before being sent back to the committee for deliberation.
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As COVID-19 cases in Japan have been increasing for 10 consecutive weeks, people should get vaccinated before visiting the nation, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. The centers reported 773 hospitalizations and 124 deaths related to COVID-19 in Taiwan last week. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) on Tuesday said the number of weekly COVID-19 cases reported in Japan has been increasing since mid-May and surpassed 55,000 cases from July 8 to July 14. The average number of COVID-19 patients at Japan’s healthcare facilities that week was also 1.39 times that of the week before and KP.3 is the dominant
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