The government should quickly establish a national transportation safety board to restart an investigation into a Puyuma Express train derailment on Oct. 21, families of the victims said yesterday, adding that it should not limit the number of personnel held accountable for the incident.
Furthermore, compensation for victims’ families should be comparable to that given to relatives of people who died in a TransAsia Airways plane crash in February 2014, which was NT$14 million (US$454,324 at the current exchange rate) per victim, they said.
Before a third meeting with Ministry of Transportation and Communications officials in the afternoon, some of the families and New Power Party Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) protested in front of the ministry’s building in Taipei.
The families only want the truth, a man surnamed Lin (林) said, adding that they feel helpess, because ministry officials have failed to properly explain what happened.
“We hope that the soon-to-be-established national transportation safety board can restart the investigation, because we do not trust the one conducted by the Executive Yuan’s investigative team, which we feel has not helped us find the truth,” Lin said.
There should be no limit on the number of people held accountable for the derailment, he said, adding that the Control Yuan should investigate the matter.
At the meeting, a man surnamed Tung (董), who lost eight relatives in the incident, said that a report into the derailment was difficult to understand, as many professional terms were written in English.
He questioned whether the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) deliberately chose to not replace the train after it found that it had two broken air compressors, and whether it intentionally decided not to connect an automatic train protection system with the operations control center.
Some of the families also questioned the authenticity of internal documents provided by the TRA.
Three former TRA directors-general — Chou Yung-hui (周永暉), Frank Fan (范植谷) and Jason Lu (鹿潔身) — should be investigated by the Control Yuan and punished if there was any wrongdoing on their part, Huang said.
Investigators promised to tomorrow disclose the names and titles of TRA employees who are members of an internal company chat room for high-level managers called “Team Plus,” whose members were reportedly informed about abnormalities on the train, and said that the chat room’s conversations would also be disclosed.
Families would be allowed to examine train maintenance information logged at 4:10pm on Oct. 21 to verify that the record was entered before, not after, the incident, they said.
Investigators also promised to disclose the names of TRA workers who they interviewed and their conversations, saying that those who declined to have their conversations disclosed would be identified.
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