President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday pledged to place a priority on the environment after the Environmental Protection Administration’s task force on Monday conditionally approved an improvement project for the Suhua Highway after what has been called the fastest assessment process in the nation’s history.
The decision came as about 2,000 Hualien County residents protested in front of the Executive Yuan on Monday, demanding speedy improvements to the highway, which was damaged by landslides caused by Typhoon Megi last month.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) told residents of Hualien and Taitung counties on Sunday that the government would definitely deliver on its promise to construct an alternative route to the dangerous Suhua Highway as soon as the plan passed an environmental impact review.
Ma yesterday said he has promised twice to Hualien County residents — November last year and February this year — that the project to construct an alternative route should begin at the end of this year provided it passed the environment impact assessment.
“The promise still stands and my position on the matter remains unchanged,” he said.
Taiwan cannot afford to neglect economic development, but it must learn how to strike a balance between environmental protection and economic development, Ma said.
“The Basic Environmental Act (環境基本法) states that environmental protection should be the priority if any economic or technological developments cause damage to the environment,” Ma said while meeting groups and individuals recognized for their outstanding contribution to environmental protection at the Presidential Office.
“Whether the developments will cause any damage to the environment will be decided by the experts conducting the environmental impact review,” Ma added.
Ma said he understood that the task force had conditionally approved the improvement project for the Suhua Highway, but he hoped the impact that the project would have on the environment would be heeded considering the area’s fragile geological structure.
Ma added that while the former Democratic Progressive Party administration put off the controversial issue and failed to approve the environment impact assessment, his administration had adopted a different approach.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS