About 300 demonstrators from Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮) yesterday protested in front of the Executive Yuan in Taipei against the government’s plan to relocate the students of an elementary school due to pollution-associated risks, saying that relocation would not curb pollution, while the move would disrupt students.
The Executive Yuan last week announced that it will move the students at Ciaotou Elementary School’s Syucuo branch to Fongrong Elementary School by the end of the semester to keep them away from pollutants, including vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), allegedly emitted by a nearby naphtha cracker run by Formosa Petrochemical Corp.
The decision was made after a study by the National Health Research Institutes showed that thiodiglycolic acid levels — an indicator of VCM exposure — in the urine of Syucuo students was higher than in students at other schools.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
However, protesters asked the government to abandon the relocation plan, saying the research might be biased and the government should solve the pollution issue instead of moving the students.
“Relocation can affect the students psychologically. Can they concentrate on their studies under such conditions?” protester Hsu Fang-yu (許芳餘) said.
Parents are more concerned than anyone else about the children’s health, but they will reject the relocation plan if the government cannot identify the pollution source or prove that relocation is necessary, Hsu said.
“Without an identifiable pollution source, the relocation plan brings an unwarranted bad reputation to the township. Will people believe the township is suitable for living?” he said.
The research was unilaterally carried out by a team led by National Taiwan University public health professor Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權) and the government only listens to the team’s opinion, Hsu said, demanding the government commission a third-party research agency to run a health risk assessment.
“Who loves our children and township more than we do? Many academics and politicians who have manipulated the issue have other agendas,” Yunlin County Councilor Lin Shen (林深) said.
If high levels of VCM are detected in the environment, the issue would be more than just about relocating the students and involve the relocation of township residents or the shutting down of the VCM plant, Lin said.
The county government in August last year moved students from the Syucuo branch to Ciaotou Elementary School’s main campus, but they were moved back to the branch the following semester due to their parents’ concern about the cramped learning environment at the main campus.
Executive Yuan spokesman Tung Chen-yuan (童振源) reaffirmed the relocation plan, saying it is a preventive measure to protect the students’ health, as they are statistically more exposed to pollutants.
“We agree to demands to enlarge the scope of the health risk assessment, pollution source investigation and environmental monitoring. We will stand with Syucuo residents to protect the students’ health,” Tung said.
Tung said the rumor that the government was planning to relocate township residents is not true.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods