New Power Party Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) yesterday accused Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) of protecting the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) after a Puyuma Express train derailed last year, killing 18 people.
During an interpellation session at the legislature with Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and Lin, Huang asked the minister whether the newly established Taiwan Transportation Safety Board would launch a new investigation into the derailment.
Lin said that the board would seek to “improve” the investigation report released by a Cabinet-level panel of external experts.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Huang said the move would be meaningless, as the Cabinet-level report was “crippled.”
He cited a finding he made last month involving an incident in March and another July in which brake shoes were “ejected” from moving Puyuma Express trains.
He asked Lin whether he had heard of the incidents and if so when, to which Lin replied that he had learned about the first incident in March.
Lin said that the problem of brake shoes coming off moving Puyuma trains predated the derailment, and there had been seven such instances.
Before the derailment on Oct. 21 last year that there had been an incident on Oct. 8 in which a brake shoe had broken away from a Puyuma Express train, Huang said, adding that an internal message issued by the TRA to its staff said that the problem would “severely affect transportation safety.”
After the derailment, incidents of brake shoes coming off while trains were being driven were not recorded in the TRA’s maintenance records, but were instead recorded in drivers’ logs, Huang said.
This is evidence that the TRA had been trying to conceal facts regarding the derailment, he said.
Huang asked Lin why the TRA had not informed the public of such a major safety breach until the issue was raised last month.
Lin said that as soon as he learned about the problem he told the TRA to assess the impact it would have on transportation safety and fix any problems regarding its maintenance records and inventory of spare parts.
The TRA assured him that even with the brake shoe problem the trains could still be considered “reasonably safe,” Lin said.
“What has been duly recorded [by the TRA] deserves commendation, while negligence in recording what should be recorded must be corrected,” the minister said.
Huang said that it is the TRA’s job to faithfully record any maintenance problems, but Lin seemed to think it deserved praise.
The TRA’s failure to disclose the problem with the brake shoes in the five versions of the Cabinet report and after he raised the question last month suggests that Lin had been protecting the TRA, he said.
Lin rejected the accusation, saying that an investigation has been launched to ascertain whether the problem was due to aging parts, design flaws or maintenance neglect.
Su said that the Cabinet has launched an extensive investigation since the derailment, but if Huang has any more doubts, he should raise them rather than using them to accuse others of concealing facts.
From a legal perspective, it still could not be proved that falling brake shoes contributed directly to the derailment, he said.
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