Taoyuan International Airport Corp’s (TIAC) decision to extend the public tendering deadline for Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport’s Terminal 3 project by 45 days would not cause further construction delays, Minister of Transportation and Communications Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday.
The deadline for the second phase of the bidding was previously set for Thursday next week, but as of Nov. 5, two interested bidders had submitted 1,582 requests for clarification of the contract terms, construction plans and bidding procedures, TIAC said on Wednesday.
“To ensure that the procurement contract is handled fairly and reasonably, we find it necessary to give interested bidders adequate time to review changes to the contract, the construction plans and other bidding documents,” TIAC said. “Given this, we’ve decided to extend the deadline until 10am on Jan. 18.”
On Aug. 21, TIAC chose two qualified bidders in the first phase, it said, adding that one bidder has brought a 42-member team of specialists to Taiwan to prepare for the second phase, while the other bidder brought a 28-member team.
Each team has been delayed by visa application procedures and the quarantine requirement in their review of the project documents, it added.
Lin was asked by reporters on the sidelines of the Legislative Yuan’s Transportation Committee whether the extension would further delay construction, given that a lack of bidders already prompted the ministry to postpone the project’s completion until 2026.
“No, I don’t think so,” Lin said. “The two teams have many questions, for which both the Civil Aeronautics Administration and TIAC will need to prepare and provide translation. They will need about 45 days to finish all of the necessary work.”
One bidder is South Korea’s Samsung C&T Corp and Taiwan’s RSEA Engineering Corp, while the other bidder is the Taiwan branch of the Tokyo-based Taisei Corp and Taiwan’s Continental Engineering Co.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching