Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has pledged to donate to charity all proceeds from farmland he part owns that had been illegally used as a parking lot.
Ko’s campaign chief of staff Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday at a news conference said that the Hsinchu City plot of land co-owned by Ko was originally farmland, as shown in an 2006 aerial photograph.
After the infraction was revealed by the media, Ko on Thursday said that on Tuesday he asked someone to check on the land and they found an unspecified number of tour buses parked on it.
Photo: Hung Mei-hsiu, Taipei Times
The Hsinchu City Government on Thursday said that it would send Ko a notice asking him to make the necessary improvements to bring the land’s use into line with its designated agricultural status or be fined NT$60,000 to NT$300,000 (US$1,923 to US$9,614).
“The original owner did some landscaping work in June 2007, and then in September turned it into a parking lot. This took place before Ko and the other co-owners purchased it,” Huang said.
“It was the original owner who in 2008 signed a contract with a real-estate company to rent out the farmhouse on the plot on an annual basis,” she said. “Each year Ko’s family receives NT$6,250 from the firm. Then in 2020 a tour bus company signed an agreement to pay rent at NT$6,729 per month, but that deal has now been terminated.”
Ko has been paid NT$1.05 million for the farmhouse and NT$198,000 for the parking lot, which he will donate to Hsinchu City Department of Social Affairs for charity work, she said.
The work to restore the parking lot back to farmland began yesterday morning with Ko having authorized TPP Hsinchu City chapter interim director Lee Kuo-chang (李國墇) to supervise the operation.
Accompanied by reporters and camera crews, Lee oversaw the operation to break up the asphalt, and clear away pieces of concrete and brick, metal fragments and what looked like rubble from a construction site.
“All the excavated material is to be transported to a landfill. The priority is to restore the land back to farmland,” Lee said.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Hsinchu City Council caucus convenor Chen Chien-ming (陳建名) alleged that Ko had broken the law.
“Today the excavation work dug up large volumes of construction materials and industrial debris, which contravenes the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法). A criminal prosecution could proceed if the co-owners permitted illegal dumping on farmland,” Chen said. “It is not so easy to evade legal responsibility, as Ko is trying to do by promising to donate to charity.”
The DPP demanded a judicial investigation.
Additional reporting by Chen Yun and Hong Mei-hsiu
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