The government has found 63 Aboriginal villages to be unsafe or partly unsafe in the wake of Typhoon Morakot and is still communicating with residents concerning their relocation, Council of Indigenous Peoples Minister Sun Ta-chuan (孫大川) said yesterday.
At a press conference at the Government Information Office, Sun touted the progress the government had made in helping Aborigines who lost land and property to rebuild their hometowns and find employment.
The government commissioned geologists to assess the safety of 90 Aboriginal villages hit by Typhoon Morakot last August. The geologists concluded that 44 were unsafe for habitation, 19 partly unsafe and 27 safe, Sun said.
Sun said 19 villages were in desperate need of land restoration and should be off-limits to various human activities depending on the location. For example, some were no longer suitable for farming. Those 19 villages included Jialan (嘉蘭), Fushan (富山) and Dajhu (大竹) in Taitung County, among others.
However, the government will not designate the villages as unsuitable for certain activities without the consent of local residents, Sun said. At the same time, it will insist that relocation is necessary for safety reasons.
The government says about 70 percent of areas affected by Typhoon Morakot and its floodwaters were Aboriginal villages.
Sun said the council had offered about 2,700 jobs lasting between two months and six months each to Aborigines in affected areas to clean and rebuild their villages.
The council will continue to work with local governments and agricultural authorities to help affected Aborigines sell their agricultural products and will hold more nationwide promotional activities to support their agricultural industry.
A total lunar eclipse coinciding with the Lantern Festival on March 3 would be Taiwan’s most notable celestial event this year, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said, urging skywatchers not to miss it. There would be four eclipses worldwide this year — two solar eclipses and two lunar eclipses — the museum’s Web site says. Taiwan would be able to observe one of the lunar eclipses in its entirety on March 3. The eclipse would be visible as the moon rises at 5:50pm, already partly shaded by the Earth’s shadow, the museum said. It would peak at about 7:30pm, when the moon would
Taiwan’s Li Yu-hsiang performs in the men’s singles figure skating short program at the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday. Li finished 24th with a score of 72.41 to advance to Saturday’s free skate portion of the event. He is the first Taiwanese to qualify for the free skate of men’s singles figure skating at the Olympics since David Liu in 1992.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday held a ceremony marking the delivery of its 11th Anping-class offshore patrol vessel Lanyu (蘭嶼艦), saying it would boost Taiwan’s ability to respond to Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics. Ocean Affairs Council Deputy Minister Chang Chung-Lung (張忠龍) presided over the CGA event in the Port of Kaoshiung. Representatives of the National Security Council also attended the event. Designed for long-range and protracted patrol operations at sea, the Lanyu is a 65.4m-long and 14.8m-wide ship with a top speed of 44 knots (81.5kph) and a cruising range of 2,000 nautical miles (3704km). The vessel is equipped with a
A KFC branch in Kaohsiung may be fined between NT$60,000 and NT$200 million (US$1,907 and US$6.37 million), after a customer yesterday found an entire AAA battery inside an egg tart, the Kaohsiung Department of Health said today. The customer was about to microwave a box of egg tarts they had bought at the fast-food restaurant’s Nanzih (楠梓) branch when they checked the bottom and saw a dark shadow inside one of them, they said in a Threads post. The customer filmed themself taking the egg tart apart to reveal an entire AAA battery inside, which apparently showed signs of damage. Surveillance footage showed
RSS