The government should seize a luxury daycare center run by the Chinese Association for Relief and Ensuing Services and turn it into a public kindergarten if the group cannot pay the NT$160 million (US$5.1 million) it owes for occupying state-owned land, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) said yesterday.
The association allegedly occupied 19 plots of state-owned land during the White Terror era whose estimated market value today is at least NT$7.7 billion, said Pan Ho-hsun (潘厚勳), the TSU’s legislative candidate for Taipei’s Xinyi-Southern Songshan electoral district, told a news conference at the headquarters of the Ill-Gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee in Taipei.
The party commended the committee for investigating whether the association is an affiliate of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Photo: CNA
The association was founded by Ku Cheng-kang (谷正綱), a KMT member who was a staunchly anti-communist protege of presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), but Hsu Li-nung (許歷農), a consultant to the New Party, is now its standing director, which is ironic as he is “a retired admiral who sucks up to China,” Pan said.
As the association was founded to provide humanitarian assistance to all Chinese refugees, he would like to ask association chairman Chang Cheng-chung (張正中) if the group plans to assist pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, many of whom have fallen victim to brutal crackdowns, Pan said.
Chang has voiced interest in an urban renewal project to build social housing on behalf of the Taipei Children’s Welfare Center, which is a tenant in one of the association’s buildings, but what right does the center have to participate in such a project, Pan said.
The committee should look into whether Chang is trying to profit illegally through the project and whether KMT Legislator Alex Fai (費鴻泰) — who represents the Xinyi-Southern Songshan electoral district — has engaged in influence peddling in connection with it, he said.
The committee should seize the center and convert it into a public kindergarten if the association cannot pay the compensation it owes the government, so that more children can receive affordable preschool education, Pan said.
When he was Changchun Borough (長春) warden, he found that a part of the mapped boundary of the borough and neighboring Liouyi Borough (六藝) had been pushed in as if avoid some plots of land, Pan said.
Asking at the Xinyi District Office, he learned that the association, “which controlled the plots,” had zoned the adjacent Futai Borough (富台) in such a way so as to concentrate all plots of public land it occupied, he said.
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