Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) yesterday said that flood control would be high on the administration’s agenda after Tropical Storm Kalmaegi wreaked havoc in southern and central Taiwan and claimed 18 lives.
As flooding caused the loss of human lives and property damage, Siew said the government was duty bound to make the issue a priority and map out a good plan.
Siew, who visited disaster areas in the south on Saturday, said that the crux of the problem lay in the budget and approach adopted to tackle the issue.
The lesson the government must learn from the flooding caused by Tropical Storm Kalmaegi was that flood control must be dealt with as a whole, rather than in segments, he said.
“We need to treat each river’s flooding problems swiftly and as a whole,” he said, suggesting that the government needs to reconsider the current budgeting system.
“The central and local governments must cooperate closely in coping with flooding. This is one thing we have learned from the flood disaster this time,” he said.
Siew made the remarks yesterday in response to media inquiry on the sidelines of a Taiwan-Japan forum held in Taipei yesterday.
At a separate setting, Cabinet Spokeswoman Vanessa Shih (史亞平) said yesterday that Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) will hold a Cabinet meeting today to review the government’s flood prevention performance during the storm.
The premier had urged all government agencies to improve the government’s flood prevention measures, she said.
Liu also promised to allow local governments to adjust the proposals they previously submitted to the Cabinet for the central government’s plan to boost domestic demand, Shih said, adding that the budget reserved for spurring the demand could be spent on flood prevention first.
Shih made the comments amid public criticism of the government’s flood prevention works.
The Ministry of National Defense has mobilized military personnel to help clear thick mud that covered roads and filled residences.
However, some were criticized by flood victims for being perfunctory, with some forgetting to bring cleaning tools, and others criticized for taking pictures on the site.
“I don’t know what they are doing. Are they here only for a show?” a flood victim said in a news report broadcast by FTV.
Meanwhile, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators pointed fingers at each other yesterday over who should be held responsible for the flood damage.
“We all know that the legislature’s stalling of the [NT$80 billion (US$2.5 billion)] budget [for flood prevention] was the main reason [for the scale of the catastrophe],” DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said.
The government began an eight-year plan to upgrade flood prevention infrastructure three years ago.
But the pan-blue-dominated legislature did not pass the proposal until January 2006, while raising it to NT$116 billion.
KMT Legislator Chi Kuo-tung (紀國棟) defended the KMT, calling Chen’s accusation “nonsense.”
He said local governments should have executed their flood prevention upgrade plans sooner after the budget was approved.
When asked for comment, KMT Legislator Chang Chia-chun (張嘉郡) questioned the Yunlin County Government’s competence, saying that the county government only completed 5 percent of its flood prevention plans over the past two years.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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