Greater Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) yesterday demanded that the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) delegate the authority to conduct workplace safety inspections to the city government following an incident at an area petrochemical plant on Tuesday night that left one worker dead and three injured.
During a city council meeting yesterday, Kaohsiung City Council Speaker Hsu Kun-yuan (許崑源) accused Chen and her administration of lax oversight of the petrochemical industry and asked the city to boost inspections.
Chen said it was wrong to blame the city government for the incident at China Petrochemical Development Corp because safety inspections at factories in the former Kaohsiung County were not within its jurisdiction, even after the county and city were merged into Greater Kaohsiung in December.
Her administration had repeatedly requested that inspection authority be transferred from the council’s Southern Region Inspection Office, but to no avail, the mayor said.
The three injured workers — Chen Ching-hsing (陳清興), Tsai Tsung-yueh (蔡宗岳) and Chan Chih-kai (詹智凱) — remain in critical condition at a local hospital. Coworker Huang Wen-ying (黃文應), 40, died after the four were rushed to the hospital at about 9:30pm on Tuesday after falling into comas while cleaning a pump filter in a chemical tank.
All four were believed to be suffering from acrylonitrile poisoning.
The firm was forced to suspend operations after the incident.
Company manager Hong Wei-teng (洪偉騰) said the four workers were following standard operating procedures while cleaning the chemical tank and that an investigation was required to determine the cause of the incident.
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