Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday promised to restore an illegal parking lot that was leased to a tour bus company in Hsinchu City to farmland, after facing criticism over the property he co-owns.
On Tuesday, Hsinchu City Government officials inspected the plot at the city’s Lungen Section No. 1320, confirming that it is owned by six people and is located in a zone designated for farming and grazing land.
They said they would investigate to determine whether the property obtained proper permission to be paved and used as parking lot.
Photo: Tsai Chang-sheng, Taipei Times
Ko told reporters that he bought the plot with five other doctors in 2008, and owns about one-fifth, or five of the 24 parcels, of the 2,309m2 plot.
He said he has put up a notice to warn people that large equipment would operate on the site in the coming days to remove the pavement.
Taiwan Statebuilding Party spokeswoman Yang Pei-hua (楊佩樺), who visited the site yesterday, said that Ko had broken the law by turning farmland into a parking lot, engaged in land speculation and hid the parking lot from the public.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members and others also visited the site to see if work had started to remove the parking lot.
“Ko, as the TPP’s presidential candidate, has talked about ‘housing justice’ for young people and called for returning land to citizens. These all sound like righteous policies, but now Ko has been found to own this farmland in Hsinchu City, valued at more NT$10 million [US$319,387],” DPP Hsinchu City Councilor Yang Ling-yi (楊玲宜) said.
“Ko knows the law, but he illegally paved it to make money leasing it for parking. Now after getting caught, he just mentioned it in a lighthearted way to cover up this scandal. His behavior is shameless,” Yang said.
DPP Hsinchu City Councilor Tseng Tzu-cheng (曾資程) said the property seemed to conflict with Ko’s farming policy.
“Ko presented his agricultural policy this month, promising to protect Taiwan’s farmland, and apply smart technology to improve farm management. Now he is shown to own farmland, which he paved over,” Tseng said.
DPP spokesman Chang Chih-hao (張志豪) said that Ko contravened regulations by making money leasing the parking lot, and possibly profiting if the land is later rezoned.
“We demand Ko apply his touted values of transparency and pragmatism on himself, and reveal how much money he has earned from the land and how much tax he has paid in the past 15 years,” Chang said.
Meanwhile, Vice President William Lai (賴清德), the DPP’s presidential candidate, responded to criticism that his family’s property in a traditional coal mining area of New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) is an illegal structure and should be razed.
Lai, whose father worked in the coal pits, said that all the housing in that area were once basic shelters for miners, which have existed for more than 60 years and were approved at the time by the local government.
Although miners and their families improved the homes over time, they remain simple structures, he said.
“My parent’s house has existed there since 1958, which was legally built prior to the passing of the Mining Act (礦業法) in 1963, and other local construction laws in the 1980s. It is clear that houses in these mining areas are already legal,” he said.
Local governments were negligent in not addressing the properties for decades after the mines were exhausted, he said, adding that they should have provided a legal framework for their renovation or reconstruction.
“These houses cannot be compared to so-called ‘illegal structures’ found elsewhere in the city, as there are laws governing city planning and housing construction,” he said.
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