Lawmakers yesterday passed an amendment to the Spatial Planning Act (國土計畫法), extending the deadline for local governments to finalize their regional spatial plans and functional zoning plans by a year and two years respectively.
Under the amended act, the deadline for submitting regional spatial plans to the Ministry of the Interior for review has been pushed back by a year to May next year, while the deadline for delivering functional zoning plans, originally due in May 2022, has been postponed to May 2024.
A controversial proposal that would have given the Executive Yuan the authority to revise national or regional spatial plans for “major construction projects” was scrapped.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The proposal drew criticism from environmentalists, who said that it would encourage development at the expense of the environment and run counter to the spirit of the act.
The amendment was passed ahead of an April 30 deadline for local governments to submit their regional spatial plans, to “get local governments off the hook,” the Democratic Progressive Party caucus said on March 13.
At that time, eight of 18 local governments had not submitted their regional spatial plans, despite being required to do so, the party’s caucus said.
Since the regional spatial plans are fundamentally different from the regional plans of the past, it has taken local governments longer than expected to produce them and some that the ministry had received had proved problematic, Construction and Planning Agency Director-General Wu Hsin-hsou (吳欣修) said yesterday.
Local governments had submitted the plans too close to the original deadline, leaving the ministry with not enough time to review them, as the act mandates a three-month time frame for review, Wu said.
An extension of the deadline for the functional zoning plans was also required as they directly affect land rights, and would require a longer period for negotiations to be carried out between the government and those affected, he said.
Additional reporting by CNA
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS