Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday denied there was any political interference in the Environmental Protection Administration’s (EPA) environmental impact assessment of a planned upgrade for the Suhua Highway, which received the green light on Monday.
Wu told reporters that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) had held discussions with environmental protection groups on more than 10 occasions before the EPA meeting.
“That is why environmental protection groups did not have any objections before [the meeting],” he said, adding that he hoped the construction plan would proceed as scheduled.
The EPA task force on Monday conditionally approved the plan after what has been called the fastest assessment process in the nation’s history. The team will now send the initial result to the Environmental Impact Assessment Review Committee, which is expected to hold a meeting to discuss the initial result within five days.
The decision came as about 2,000 Hualien County residents protested in front of the Executive Yuan, demanding speedy improvements to the highway, which was damaged by landslides caused by Typhoon Megi last month.
The protesters called for a new freeway to be constructed or an upgrade to the existing highway to make the rocky east coast more accessible.
The MOTC previously proposed spending NT$48 billion (US$1.6 billion) on an eight-year project to upgrade the route. However, the proposal failed to gain approval from the committee when it met for the first time last month, before the typhoon.
Despite the premier’s claim that the plan was not opposed by any environmental protection groups, 10 Green Party Taiwan members launched a silent sit-in in front of the EPA late on Sunday, saying they feared the committee would yield to political pressure.
Meanwhile, Wu said that whether Chinese victims of the Suhua Highway mudslides would be eligible to apply for national compensation in Taiwan depended on whether Taiwanese citizens had previously been granted national compensation by China.
Wu told Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) in the legislature that Taiwan would give Chinese nationals the same treatment as Taiwanese in China under a similar situation.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY AFP
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