The Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) is to pay NT$150 million (US$5.24 million) to families of people who died in the derailment of a Taroko Express train on April 2 last year, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday.
Chen Meng-hsiu (陳孟秀), an attorney who represents victims’ families, yesterday wrote on Facebook that Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) had agreed to pay NT$150.043 million to relatives of the deceased.
“Money does not mean much to families. What they care about is that the TRA is punished. This is the meaning of the restitution,” she said, adding that it would be the first time that the agency pays what is legally defined as punitive damages to victims of a train crash.
“Systemic problems cannot be resolved within a few days, and any history-changing reform cannot be achieved overnight,” she said. “However, without someone sounding the alarm, the hidden and lingering problems will never be resolved.”
While the nation has made progress in many fields in the past few years, Taiwanese live with constant concerns over the safety of the public transportation system, Chen said.
Public transportation safety is the most profound challenge facing the government, she added.
“The Taiwan Railways Administration should pay more compensation than before for every fatal incident that occurs” under its supervision, she said.
In 2018, the derailment of a Puyuma Express train killed 18 people, and each victim’s family receiving NT$15.7 million in compensation, she said.
However, no major reform was conducted at the agency since then, Chen said.
“We instead saw more negligence on the part of the TRA, which consequently led to the Taroko Express derailment last year, which killed 49 people,” she said.
Families of the deceased do not want the tragedy that they experienced to happen to other families, because they know no amount of money can bring back their loved ones, she said.
Without harsher punitive damages, the TRA would go about its business as usual, she said.
Wang told the Central News Agency on a trip to Nantou County yesterday that the ministry agreed that the TRA must acknowledge that it made a mistake.
However, Wang said that the punitive damages should not be seen as coming from a fund that the TRA set aside for such a purpose.
The public “should view it as the external mechanism to oversee the TRA,” he said.
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