Grilled by lawmakers on the issue of expensive, yet underused parking facilities, known as “mosquito houses” (蚊子館), the Public Construction Commission (PCC) yesterday said it would reinvestigate all such facilities nationwide within a month and deliver a report on improving their usage.
The National Audit Office recently released a list of 13 public facilities that cost nearly NT$1.6 billion (US$54 million) to build, but are shunned by the public, who consider them “mosquito houses.”
At the legislature’s Transportation Committee yesterday, PCC Deputy Minister Yan Jeou-rong (顏久榮), in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tsai Chi-chang’s (蔡其昌) question of how many of these public facilities are listed by the commission for management, said there are a total of 88 across the nation.
However, Tsai said that according to Yao Jui-chung’s (姚瑞中) book, Mirage — Disused public property in Taiwan (海市蜃樓—台灣閒置公共設施攝影計劃), there are at least 100 “mosquito houses.”
“So it is possible that some facilities have not been listed by the commission yet,” Tsai said.
He added that the government spent about NT$5.8 billion on constructing buildings for the Taipei International Flora Expo and there has been no income at all from these buildings since May last year.
However, the buildings are not even listed by the commission for reuse, he said.
“How do you want the public to believe that the commission can now come up with good ways to use these ‘mosquito houses’ that the government wasted taxpayers’ money on, when the buildings at the Taipei International Flora Expo are not even listed?” he said.
Yan said that most of the facilities listed by the commission are managed by the central government and as it makes an effort to inspect all these facilities, it has also asked local governments to report on the situation in their areas.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yang Li-huan (楊麗環) said that local governments should be required to submit a 10-to-15-year management plan for major exhibitions or activities, before they are allowed to build facilities for such exhibitions.
DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) demanded that the commission recheck and make public all “mosquito houses,” as well as announce plans for their management on a seasonal basis.
Yan said that his agency would do so.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
Ferry operators are planning to provide a total of 1,429 journeys between Taiwan proper and its offshore islands to meet increased travel demand during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, the Maritime and Port Bureau said yesterday. The available number of ferry journeys on eight routes from Saturday next week to Feb. 2 is expected to meet a maximum transport capacity of 289,414 passengers, the bureau said in a news release. Meanwhile, a total of 396 journeys on the "small three links," which are direct ferries connecting Taiwan's Kinmen and Lienchiang counties with China's Fujian Province, are also being planned to accommodate