Members of the Taiwan Railway Labor Union yesterday threatened to collectively strike on International Workers’ Day if the Ministry of Transportation and Communications does not address the Taiwan Railways Administration’s (TRA) short-term debt problem before the Taiwan Railway Corp is established next year.
The union issued the statement as the nation commemorated the second anniversary of the TRA’s deadliest train accident, when a Taroko Express train hit a truck that had slid onto the railway tracks, causing it to derail in the Cingshui Tunnel (清水隧道) in Hualien County, killing 49 people and injuring 213.
Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) yesterday afternoon paid his respects to the victims of the derailment at a memorial service at the TRA Fugang Mechanical Engineering Depot in Taoyuan, where two severely damaged train carriages from the accident are stored for memorial purposes.
Photo: CNA
“Taiwan Railway Corp will be established on Jan. 1 as planned. This is the way to make it possible for the TRA to have a fundamental safety reform and help the railway operator improve through an external oversight mechanism,” Wang said.
The union said it remained deeply saddened by the 47 passengers and two train drivers who died in the accident.
“Over the past two years, we have been calling on the government and the TRA’s management to increase investment in railway safety management to ensure that passengers are safe,” the union said. “The railway agency’s debt situation has deteriorated, and most of the increased expenditures are long-term investments for improving train safety and implementing preventive risk management. Properties owned by the TRA or the future Taiwan Railway Corp should also be used to the ‘zero-accident vision.’”
“However, all high-ranking government officials and groups only wanted to use this accident as an excuse, using ‘corporatization’ to carve up properties that should be developed to generate funds to improve railway safety,” the union said. “If the Executive Yuan or the Ministry of Transportation and Communications do not respond to our requests in good faith, the union would take countermeasures and exercise legal leave rights again on International Workers’ Day on May 1.”
Earlier this year, TRA workers and management reached a consensus on debt issues, in which the agency agreed to hand over three plots of land it owns as collateral to help set up a debt-repayment fund.
Following a Cabinet reshuffle in February, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics said that the three plots of land were insufficient collateral to set up the fund, and requested that the agency hand over five more plots, while the debt repayment period was shortened from 50 years to 20 years.
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