Taoyuan County Government on Wednesday scrapped its plan to forcibly demolish a warehouse and factory owned by I-Mei Foods Co situated in the Nankan River Basin, after the company promised to tear it down itself by the end of next year.
I-Mei has so far managed to weather the food additive scare thanks to a food safety research laboratory it invested in years ago. The company spent more than NT$60 million on the laboratory, which is capable of performing more than 150 types of examinations, including detecting heavy metals, micro-organisms, residual pesticides and veterinary -medicine. On Friday last week, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) paid a visit to the laboratory and lauded the company’s food safety screening procedures.
The county government’s initial plan to forcibly demolish the company’s warehouse and factory led I-Mei to post on its Facebook page: “Shortly after the president [Ma] left, the Taoyuan County Government announced it is going to tear us down.”
Photo: Li Jung-ping, Taipei Times
During a protest outside the warehouse on Wednesday, I-Mei director Tsai Yung-fu (蔡永富) said that the building the county government was going to demolish belonged to I-Mei when the company first set up its factories in the area and had legal permits.
It was only after the county government capitulated to “political influences” that it included that particular piece of land in its rivers management plan, Tsai said.
According to the Water Resources Agency, the land originally belonged to I-Mei, but because of the county government’s Nankan river management project, it was expropriated by Lujhu Township (蘆竹) in 1994, with structural expropriation on the plot of land subsequently filed in 1997.
The agency added that I-Mei had not been happy with the expropriation order and it had appealed the case, but its appeals were rejected by the administrative court.
The county government said it had sent I-Mei a notification to complete the plant demolition by April 12, adding that it had given I-Mei enough time to comply.
However, the county government on Wednesday said that given I-Mei had operated its factories in Taoyuan for many years and had contributed to the economic development of the county, it was willing to give the company another chance to propose a plan for relocation and arrange for the demolition of the warehouses in question.
In a statement released late on Wednesday night, I-Mei reiterated that part of the property in the area originally belonged to the company and had been illegally expropriated to Lujhu Township.
I-Mei says it has proposed a relocation plan to be approved by Taoyuan County Commissioner John Wu (吳志揚).
TRANSLATED BY JAKE CHUNG, STAFF WRITER
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