The Taipei Department of Urban Development yesterday said that a construction company’s demolition of a privately owned building was carried out in accordance with legal procedures as part of a private urban renewal project approved by the Taipei City Government.
Pacific Construction Co on Friday sent three excavators to a site on Tingzhou Road (汀州路), and in just two minutes tore down a house owned by Luo Chin-kuang (羅進光).
The urban renewal project involved 80 landowners, and Luo was the only one to oppose to it.
Photo: Hsiao Ting-fang, Taipei Times
All the other homes had already been demolished.
Luo had previously said that his house’s location had been determined according to feng shui principles, and that demolishing it would bring Taiwan bad luck.
Luo emerged from his home at noon and, kneeling down, he read from a prepared statement, pleading to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) to help protect his land.
He said that he would not file any charges against the construction company.
Department head Lin Jou-min (林洲民) told reporters that the demolition had been carried out lawfully on a permit issued by the city government in April last year.
Citing the Urban Renewal Act (都市更新條例), Lin said that the project was approved after gaining the backing of 60 percent of property owners who together owned more than two-thirds of space allocated for the project.
Contractors for urban renewal projects should reach agreements with all stakeholders because tearing down homes could lead to social unrest, Lin said.
At a separate setting, Ko, who has previously met with Luo, said that he was surprised to learn that Luo did not know of the demolition in advance, “and I did not know it either.”
While the city had issued a demolition permit to the construction firm, “I would expect them to talk to the home owner before flattening the house,” Ko said, adding that he would try to come up with a solution that is acceptable to everyone.
“If he [Luo] insists, we could try to find a way for him to have peace of mind in designing the building,” Ko said.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Credit departments of farmers’ and fishers’ associations blocked a total of more than NT$180 million (US$6.01 million) from being lost to scams last year, National Police Agency (NPA) data showed. The Agricultural Finance Agency (AFA) said last week that staff of farmers’ and fishers’ associations’ credit departments are required to implement fraud prevention measures when they serve clients at the counter. They would ask clients about personal financial management activities whenever they suspect there might be a fraud situation, and would immediately report the incident to local authorities, which would send police officers to the site to help, it said. NPA data showed
ENERGY RESILIENCE: Although Alaska is open for investments, Taiwan is sourcing its gas from the Middle East, and the sea routes carry risks, Ho Cheng-hui said US government officials’ high-profile reception of a Taiwanese representative at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference indicated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific energy resilience alliance, an academic said. Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) attended the conference in Alaska on Thursday last week at the invitation of the US government. Pan visited oil and gas facilities with senior US officials, including US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and US Senator Daniel Sullivan. Pan attending the conference on behalf of President William Lai (賴清德) shows a significant elevation in diplomatic representation,
The Taipei City Reserve Command yesterday initiated its first-ever 14-day recall of some of the city’s civilian service reservists, who are to undergo additional training on top of refresher courses. The command said that it rented sites in Neihu District (內湖), including the Taipei Tennis Center, for the duration of the camp to optimize tactical positioning and accommodate the size of the battalion of reservists. A battalion is made up of four companies of more than 200 reservists each, it said. Aside from shooting drills at a range in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), the remainder of the training would be at
RSS