The nation has approximately 150 rarely used public facilities, Public Construction Commission Minister Wu Hong-mo (吳宏謀) said yesterday, adding that these facilities are to be used as part of the long-term care plan and as non-profit child care facilities.
The commission said it has a list of 109 rarely used facilities around the nation, which are commonly referred to as “mosquito buildings.” Based on a commission report, the government spent about NT$25.3 billion (US$801 million) building the facilities.
One of the facilities is Singda Fishing Port (興達港) in Kaohsiung, which cost about NT$7.09 billion.
The largest rarely used facility is an advanced research park in Nantou County’s Chunghsing New Village (中興新村), which used to house the defunct Taiwan Provincial Government.
Among the properties on the list, 34 percent were central government projects, while the other 66 percent were built by local governments.
Meanwhile, 19 of the 109 cases are market buildings, which topped all other categories.
Other less frequented facilities include primary schools, parking lots and incinerators.
Facing questions from lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, Wu said the commission has yet to officially list another 40 facilities with low usage rates.
Wu said the sites were added to the list over years of inspections and the commission is scheduled to brief the Executive Yuan on Thursday regarding revitalization projects.
The commission planned to create 14,000 jobs by putting the rarely used facilities to work, but it had barely created 1,400 jobs after it began managing the properties, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Cheng Pao-ching (鄭寶清) said.
The commission is a “giant” when articulating plans, but a “dwarf” when it comes to executing them, Cheng added.
DPP Legislator Lee Kun-tse (李昆澤) said there are examples in other nations where the government has succeeded in finding ways to put rarely used facilities to good use. An example, Lee said, is in Vienna, Austria, where the government turned old gas storage tanks into shopping malls, office buildings and residential housing.
Taiwan’s rarely used facilities could be turned into social housing units and non-profit child care centers, Lee added.
Wu said the commission plans to use the facilities for child care and elderly care centers.
“Personally, I am in favor of turning these facilities into non-profit child care centers. Because of the nation’s low fertility rate, some primary schools have also become less frequently used. They could be used to provide care for the elderly to ease the government’s strained budget for the policy,” Wu said.
However, Wu said the commission has reservations about transforming the facilities into social housing units, which could have the negative effect of them being negatively labeled.
Wu also said that developers of any public infrastructure projects would be asked to provide plans on how they plan to manage the infrastructure after it is built.
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