Taiwan Railway Corp (TRC) was fined a total of NT$8.7 million (US$276,542) for 15 penalties accumulated between 2022 and last year for failing to comply with railway regulations, the Railway Bureau said.
The largest single fine was NT$1.2 million, issued for incidents between 2022 and 2023 in which the TRC assigned workers who had failed physical examinations and lacked driver’s licenses to operate maintenance engineering vehicles, or appointed personnel who had not passed certification tests to serve in train operation roles, the bureau said.
The bureau said it conducts one regular inspection each year of TRC and Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC), supplemented by random inspections and routine inspections covering operations, engineering, mechanical and electrical systems.
Photo: Taipei Times
From 2022 to last year, the bureau conducted 144 inspections at TRC and 18 inspections at THSRC, it said.
The bureau said it was still reviewing three other penalty cases related to TRC.
TRC was also fined for failing to conduct pre-duty alcohol tests for maintenance vehicle drivers, onboard staff and train operators; assigning trainees who had not completed training to independently operate platform-related rail equipment during their internship period; assigning maintenance vehicle drivers without aptitude assessment records; and repeatedly allowing workers who had failed physical examinations to operate trains, it added.
It received another fine when a shunting operator failed to properly confirm a stop signal, it said.
Each of these violations resulted in fines of NT$600,000, the bureau added.
TRC had 12 breaches of railway regulations resulting in penalties in 2023, one in 2024 and two last year, indicating a gradual decline in the number of cases, the bureau said.
Meanwhile, the bureau imposed three penalties on THSRC totaling NT$1.2 million from 2022 to last year.
One case in 2024 involved failure to conduct pre-duty alcohol concentration tests for train conductors in the operations department, resulting in a NT$600,000 fine, it said.
It had two cases in 2022, when it employed foreign workers without the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ approval, the bureau said.
The bureau imposed a fine of NT$300,000 for each case in 2022, the bureau added.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
RSS