In a bid to resolve sanitation and traffic problems caused by vendors, the Taipei City Government yesterday said it has put together a task force to carry out daily inspections at Linjiang Street Market until a self-regulation body is formed to address such issues.
The Taipei Market Administration Office said that in addition to its own employees, the task force includes staff from the Taipei Police Department’s Daan District (大安) precinct, the Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Health and the Fire Department.
Although the street is well-known for its night market, office division chief Yang Chung-cheng (楊忠誠) said that the inspections target about 200 daytime vendors, adding that they are acting on the instructions of Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
Photo: Huang Chien-hao, Taipei Times
The task force has been carrying out inspections at the market and asking vendors blocking the street to leave since the market failed a fire safety drill on Sunday, he said.
Vendors selling leafy vegetables often leave vegetable stalks or leaves on the ground and fruit packages are often strewn on the ground, he said.
Asked why daytime vendors are being targeted when many nighttime stalls also block the street and could obstruct rescue efforts in the event of a fire, Yang said that a self-regulation body was already in place for the night market.
Yang said that members of the self-regulation body would direct vendors blocking the street to clear the way for fire engines should a fire break out.
Linjiang Borough (臨江) Warden Huang Ching-tsai (黃金財) protested strongly against the inspections, accusing the city government of trying to “wipe out” vendors.
He said that he supports the effort to make the market cleaner and better organized, but is against members of the task force’s eviction of vendors over the past few days, which he said is putting them out of business.
Huang said that Ko made the decision to clear the street after inspecting it a few times.
He said the mayor was prone to make “hotheaded” decisions, only to regret them later.
He blamed the problem on ineffective communication between vendors and the market administration office, with the dispute being drawn out for many years and resulting in more than 10 unanswered notices the office delivered to the night market’s self-regulation body that were never passed on to the vendors in question.
He asked city officials to give vendors until Dec. 31 to form a self-regulation body, so that they would have enough time to negotiate with landlords and shopowners over space utilization.
Yang said that the agencies are only asking that a self-regulation body for the traditional market be put in place, like the night market.
Yang said that the office would not agree to Huang’s request for a grace period, as the problem had persisted for a protracted period and it was time to enforce administrative power.
He said that a self-regulation body must be formed by the end of next week; otherwise, the task force would continue to evict vendors blocking the street.
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