The Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) yesterday said it would honor the workers who sacrificed their lives for the construction of the South Link Railway (南迴鐵路) in a celebration commemorating the 20th anniversary of its completion on Friday.
The 98.2km-long railway connects Fangliao (枋寮) in Pintung County and Taitung County. It was the last stretch of the around-the-nation railway network and became operational on Oct. 5, 1992.
Construction on the South Link began in 1980 and was fraught with accidents because the work was mostly carried out in mountainous areas. Workers faced the danger of sudden flooding and roof collapses while drilling tunnels along the route. A total of 21 workers died during the construction of the railway.
The Taitung County Government has built a memorial park to commemorate the building of the South Link Railway at the plaza in front of Taitung Railway Station, with the names of the workers who perished carved on a granite wall.
The railway administration characterized the task of locating the family members of the deceased and surviving workers as “mission impossible.”
The engineering office that was in charge of building the national railway was reorganized several times before becoming the current Eastern Region Engineering Office of the Railway Reconstruction Bureau.
All the personnel associated with the project have retired and the TRA has only been able to obtain the names of the deceased and the dates on which they died.
The TRA also said that it had further information on only three of the deceased workers, whose records were kept by the Veteran Affairs Commission. To find out more about the workers who had participated in the project, the administration began asking those who had worked on the South Link Railway to contact Taitung Railway Station in August.
The celebratory event was proposed by Hsinchu County resident Huang Hsu-kuang (黃旭光), whose father died 17 days after joining the construction team. Huang, who suffers from a severe visual impairment, said his father would commute back and forth to treat his condition. While he hoped to remember his father through the event, he also said that the sacrifices made by the unsung heroes who built such a challenging project should not be forgotten by the public either.
As souvenirs for visitors, the TRA said it would publish 3,000 sets of memorial platform tickets for the railway stations along the South Link Railway, which will go on sale on Friday.
Travel agencies in Taiwan are working to secure alternative flights for travelers bound for New Zealand for the Lunar New Year holiday, as Air New Zealand workers are set to strike next week. The airline said that it has confirmed that the planned industrial action by its international wide-body cabin crew would go ahead on Thursday and Friday next week. While the Auckland-based carrier pledged to take reasonable measures to mitigate the impact of the workers’ strike, an Air New Zealand flight arriving at Taipei from Auckland on Thursday and another flight departing from Taipei for Auckland on Saturday would have to
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS