The Environmental Protection Administration yesterday posted online the amendment to the Regulations Governing Collection of Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Fees (土壤及地下水污染整治費收費辦法), which will help raise NT$270 million (US$9.2 million) annually to repair areas with damaged environments.
The new regulations are scheduled to take effect on July 1, the administration said.
Currently, the government is able to levy about NT$650 million in soil and groundwater pollution fees each year.
Tsai Hung-teh (蔡鴻德), executive secretary of the administration’s soil and groundwater remediation fund management board, said the nation started collecting soil and groundwater remediation fees in 2002. As of last year, Tsai said a total of NT$6.1 billion had been collected, adding that more than 90 percent came from contributions by the petrochemical industry.
However, examinations by the administration showed that some of the contaminated sites were polluted by heavy metals, Tsai said, adding that 15 businesses that handled nickel, copper and other heavy metals were now required to pay remediation fees as well, including manufacturers of printed circuit boards and semiconductors.
Meanwhile, Tsai said current regulations enabled remediation fee payers to apply for a 95 percent refund if they exported their excess amount of imported chemical substances to other countries. Both CPC Taiwan and Formosa Group — the nation’s two largest petrochemical product suppliers — paid smaller remediation fees because of the refund policy, Tsai said.
“In the past, suppliers were refunded because it was considered that the excess and petrochemical products, once exported, would not cause any pollution in the country,” Tsai said.
However, exports of petrochemical products have increased, which has in turn increased the refund for suppliers, Tsai said.
After extensive discussions with researchers, Tsai said the amendment would cancel the refund policy for petrochemical product exports.
Tsai said petrochemical product suppliers would only be able to apply for the refund after the unused chemical substances were completely exported, adding that the refund percentage would also be reduced from 95 percent to 70 percent.
As incentives for petrochemical product suppliers to purchase environmental liability insurance and build pollution-prevention facilities, the amendment also authorizes the administration to refund no more than 25 percent of the investment in these two categories, Tsai said.
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