Former Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) director-general Jason Lu (鹿潔身) and two of his former subordinates have been impeached by the Control Yuan over their negligence that resulted in Puyuma Express No. 6432 derailing on Oct. 21, 2018, while approaching a bend near Suao Township’s (蘇澳) Sinma Station (新馬) in Yilan County.
The accident killed 18 people and left more than 200 injured.
The government watchdog on Tuesday passed a motion to impeach Lu, former TRA Locomotive Department deputy head Liu Tsan-huang (柳燦煌) and former TRA Central Dispatch Center head Wu Jung-chin (吳榮欽).
The Control Yuan found the three former employees negligent in their roles overseeing safety at the TRA, in particular the Puyuma Express safety system, which ultimately led to the tragedy.
The derailment was a combination of a number of factors, including the TRA’s poor management of its train drivers, the disconnection of the central dispatch and remote monitoring system from the Puyuma Express automatic train protection (ATP) system, and various other technical malfunctions, Control Yuan member Lee Yueh-der (李月德) said.
Lu had failed to improve the TRA’s decades-long poor train safety management system during his tenure and also failed to adequately supervise his subordinates, the Control Yuan said.
Liu and Wu were also held responsible as they had approved the delivery of the Puyuma Express trains from the Japanese manufacturer and put them into service without realizing that the ATP system, which prevents it from speeding, was not connected to the TRA’s remote monitoring system, it said.
The absence of the link meant that the central dispatch center had no way of monitoring the train driver and therefore the TRA was unaware that the ATP had been disabled by driver Yu Chen-chung (尤振仲) at the time of the accident, leading to the train speeding prior to its derailment.
The ruling has been sent to the Judicial Yuan’s Public Functionary Disciplinary Sanction Commission, which is to decide on the punishments that should be imposed on the former employees, the Control Yuan said.
Yu, Liu and Wu were in June last year indicted on negligent manslaughter charges by the Yilan District Prosecutors’ Office.
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