Firefighters struggled to extinguish the fire that raged at the Nan Ya Plastics white pearl paper plant in Chiayi on Sunday, taking about 17 hours to put it out. The thick fumes that billowed out of the blaze were blamed for a black-colored rain that occurred shortly after, thought to be the result of partially combusted carbon residue in the air. This should be a wake-up call for the nation about its lax attitude toward industrial safety.
Even though Nan Ya is listed on the stock exchange separately from Formosa Plastics, it is actually a member of Formosa Group. Fires at Formosa’s sixth naphtha cracker in Yunlin are still very fresh in the memory, having happened in July this year. The group is still smarting from the compensation it had to pay for those fires, so the Nan Ya blaze only adds to the financial burden and deepens the damage done to the company’s reputation.
The group has come under scrutiny and criticism from all quarters and it seems to have gone adrift since the death of its founder Wang Yung-ching (王永慶). In the face of this string of industrial accidents, safety and restoring the group’s battered corporate image have become priorities.
That these accidents are, to some extent at least, the product of this nation’s industrial culture is a damning indictment of attitudes toward safety in this country. On Thursday, seven lives were lost when scaffolding collapsed along a section of highway in Nantou County, and before that there was an uproar when an engineer died, seemingly from overwork. Sadly, it appears that all sectors of industry are affected by this indifference to basic health and safety principles.
This nation has paid insufficient attention to industrial safety and the problems are across the board.
First, workers tend to shy away from hassle. The slapdash attitude — the “oh, it’ll be alright” approach — to health and safety is still very much with us and this makes it difficult to implement safety rules effectively. Indeed, “the devil is in the details,” and that devil is behind the recent string of accidents.
The second problem is with the industrialists — the top brass. With wafer-thin profits and mounting benefit costs, even the managerial system at a major enterprise, such as Formosa Group, is built around cost-cutting and efficiency, and this tends to come at the expense of safety. In the past, keeping costs low across the board was considered a virtue. Perhaps pressure from the increasing emphasis on human rights, the environment and sufficient wages has exacerbated safety problems.
Finally, monitoring by the government doesn’t seem to be working, either.
After any accident, the Council of Labor Affairs declares that it will “assess the system of accountability” and “conduct a survey of safety in the workplace and fines,” but none of this can make up for the loss of life.
While there is obviously a need to do something, there seems to be a huge gap between the regulations that appear on paper and the regulations that are enforced.
Occupational safety needs to be examined at every level; from the health and safety management procedures of major enterprises to fire prevention and safety protection at individual sites, to fire exits in department stores. Unfortunately, it is often a case of “all talk and no action.” The string of accidents and disaster at Formosa Group plants are not the fault of one particular group: The blame lies with the government, industry and workers alike.
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
US President Donald Trump last week announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on eight countries. As Taiwan, a key hub for semiconductor manufacturing, is among them, the policy would significantly affect the country. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) dispatched two officials to the US for negotiations, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) board of directors convened its first-ever meeting in the US. Those developments highlight how the US’ unstable trade policies are posing a growing threat to Taiwan. Can the US truly gain an advantage in chip manufacturing by reversing trade liberalization? Is it realistic to
Trying to force a partnership between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and Intel Corp would be a wildly complex ordeal. Already, the reported request from the Trump administration for TSMC to take a controlling stake in Intel’s US factories is facing valid questions about feasibility from all sides. Washington would likely not support a foreign company operating Intel’s domestic factories, Reuters reported — just look at how that is going over in the steel sector. Meanwhile, many in Taiwan are concerned about the company being forced to transfer its bleeding-edge tech capabilities and give up its strategic advantage. This is especially
Last week, 24 Republican representatives in the US Congress proposed a resolution calling for US President Donald Trump’s administration to abandon the US’ “one China” policy, calling it outdated, counterproductive and not reflective of reality, and to restore official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, enter bilateral free-trade agreement negotiations and support its entry into international organizations. That is an exciting and inspiring development. To help the US government and other nations further understand that Taiwan is not a part of China, that those “one China” policies are contrary to the fact that the two countries across the Taiwan Strait are independent and
RSS