Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday ordered a nationwide inspection of bridges in the wake of Tuesday’s collapse of the Nanfangao Bridge in Yilan County’s Suao Township (蘇澳), but also said that the bridge would be rebuilt, as Nanfangao is a major fishing port and a tourist attraction.
Su also ordered the newly established Taiwan Transportation Safety Board to investigate the cause of the collapse and report on how improvements can be made to prevent similar incidents.
Inspection of bridges overseen by the Taiwan International Ports Corp (TIPC) are to focus on those that are old or dilapidated, have been hit by landslides, are structurally unique, or located by ports or the seaside, leaving them prone to corrosion, Su said at a weekly Cabinet meeting.
Photo: Wu Cheng-feng, Taipei Times
The Public Construction Commission is to create a list of all bridges not overseen by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC), Su said.
The commission is also to ensure that any potentially dangerous bridges are identified and that the needed reinforcement work is conducted by the relevant agencies, the premier added.
Inspections of bridges overseen by TIPC are to be completed by the end of this year, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka said.
Photo courtesy of Ministry of National Defense
There are more than 20,000 bridges nationwide that fall under the jurisdiction of local governments, and they are to undergo a thorough inspection, she said.
No matter how many administrations there have been over the 21 years since the Nanfangao Bridge was built, the current administration would not seek to evade responsibility over the incident, she added.
The design and tendering process for rebuilding the bridge is to be overseen by the Public Construction Commission, Su told the Cabinet.
Later in the day, Su was asked by reporters whether TIPC was simply a pork-barrel agency for Democratic Progressive Party, as the Nanfangao Bridge had not been inspected for 21 years, while TIPC’s three former chairmen during President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration had all served in the Kaoshiung City Government when Presidential Office Secretary-General Chen Chu (陳菊) was mayor of Kaohsiung.
Once the investigation into the collapse is complete, anyone found to bear responsibility for the incident would be strictly punished, Su told reporters.
It would be appropriate for personnel that were negligent in maintaining the bridge to be subject to punishment, he said.
In other developments, military personnel yesterday morning cleared a path for about 500 fishing boats to enter and exit the fishing port amid the ongoing removal of the bridge wreckage, the premier announced.
If the work of fishing boats in the port or the operations of stores or businesses in the port area prove to be affected by the heavy vehicles being used to clear the debris, the transportation ministry would provide compensation after consulting Minister Without Portfolio Wu Tze-cheng (吳澤成), he added.
AGGRESSION: China’s latest intrusions set a new benchmark for its ‘gray zone’ tactics and possibly a new pattern that it would attempt to normalize, a researcher said China’s latest military exercises represent a new challenge to Taiwan’s legal authority to demarcate its borders in the Taiwan Strait, a defense expert said, adding that the fleets in the latest exercises were likely the most powerful the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ever assembled. The PLA conducted military exercises from Sunday last week to 6am on Friday, which encompassed large swathes of the western Pacific, including the Taiwan Strait and waters off the Philippines and Guam, National Policy Foundation associate research fellow Chieh Chung (揭仲) said on Friday. The Ministry of National Defense said that it detected 70 warship and 162 aircraft
DOMESTIC MARKET: To protect the livelihoods of local egg farmers, the government adopted a new method for releasing imported eggs, the agriculture minister said More than 54 million imported eggs will be disposed, as their expiration date has passed, Minister of Agriculture Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said yesterday. Chen made the remarks at a news conference in Taipei, explaining the flow of imported eggs following recent controversies regarding the products. The ministry introduced a special egg import program to address a nationwide egg shortage earlier this year. However, controversies have risen in recent weeks. These included an accusation that the government helped some egg importing companies over others, eggs imported from Brazil that had an incorrect expiration date, and egg shipments from Brazil that were found
PACIFIC OCEAN: Defense experts have warned that the ‘Shandong,’ China’s second largest aircraft carrier, poses a serious threat to eastern Taiwan’s defenses The drills conducted by the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong in the Western Pacific last week were more aimed at showcasing China’s military capabilities to the US rather than toward Taiwan, a Taiwanese defense expert said yesterday. Lin Yin-yu (林穎佑), an assistant professor at Tamkang University’s Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, said the drills which involved dozens of warplanes sought to test China’s anti-access and area denial capabilities should the US and its allies attempt to interfere in a cross-strait conflict. Lin said that the latest Chinese drills coincided with a joint maritime exercise conducted by the US, South Korea
Thousands of bottles of Sriracha have been returned or destroyed after the discovery of excessive sulfur dioxide, a bleaching agent, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Tuesday. About 12,600 bottles totaling 9,991.8kg of the hot sauce imported from the US by Emporium Corp (河洛企業) were flagged at the border for containing illegal levels of sulfur dioxide, the FDA said in its regular border inspection announcement. Inspectors discovered 0.5g per kilogram of the common bleaching agent and preservative, higher than the 0.03g permitted, it said. As it is the first time within six months the product has been flagged, Sriracha products from
RSS