Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) said yesterday that more cross-departmental negotiations would be needed for the nation’s first sanatorium for leprosy patients to be designated a national historic site.
At a legislative session to report on the preservation of the Losheng (Happy Life) Sanatorium, Lung said that a cultural asset evaluation committee of the New Taipei City (新北市) government ruled in 2009 that the sanatorium qualifies for historic building and cultural landmark status, but not for recognition as a historic site.
“More negotiations would be needed before government officials like us would be able to reverse a decision made by professionals,” Lung said in response to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chen Pi-han (陳碧涵) who said the ministry should quickly clarify whether the sanatorium qualifies for recognition as a national historic site.
Local activists and students have urged the ministry to designate the sanatorium, built in the 1930s to segregate Hanson’s disease patients from society, as a national historic site, which they believe would help with its preservation.
A total of 205 people still live there.
Chen suggested the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) should be made to allocate NT$10 million (US$336,080) per year of the revenue it collects from its planned Xinzhuang metro rail line to the preservation of what remains of the sanatorium.
She said the idea of giving money back to the sanatorium is “reasonable,” as it has not benefited from the MRT line being built near its premises.
Action to preserve the sanatorium has been under way since 2004, when the transit company made plans to encroach on the site to build a rail depot for the system’s planned Xinzhuang line.
Activists have blamed the line’s construction for causing subsidence near the sanatorium, which they say has led to cracks in the walls of the buildings and sinkholes appearing in its grounds.
Lung said her ministry has already asked TRTC to consider immediate repairs to the sanatorium’s collapsed roofs and has held talks with the Department of Health on turning the sanatorium into a medical museum.
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