Six days after Typhoon Toraji brought death and destruction to Taiwan, a visit by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to one of the severely affected areas yesterday highlighted political and legal difficulties that the government will face in its efforts both to facilitate recovery from the disaster and to prevent similar future catastrophes.
Chen flew aboard a helicopter to the mountainous villages of Chiayi County's Alishan township, where some 800 residents remained cut off by roads blocked by landslides.
PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
Tearful residents petitioned Chen for an immediate clean-up of gravel left by mudslides, which piled up along local river banks to heights of more than 10m during the typhoon, creating a further potential hazard in the event of more mudslides.
They also called upon the government to recycle the gravel as construction materials to enable the county to sell the gravel to fund local reconstruction work thereby helping to expedite its recovery.
The law, however, forbids the sale of gravel obtained from certain areas in the vicinity of -- among other places -- rivers and bridges, according to Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Hsin-yi (
Arriving later in the same area, Vice President Annette Lu (
Lu said that, as head of the presidential office's consultative committee on science and technology, she had been informed of Japanese technologies to recycle gravel to make household tiles. She said Taiwan should find ways to make good use of the gravel from the mudslides.
A soil and water conservation engineer, Debbie Weng (鄭麗瓊), told the Taipei Times that the government should start constructing what she called "detention pounds" at the confluence points of rivers prone to mudslides in order to capture gravel from the mudslides.
"The gravel can then be further filtered and recycled to become marketable as construction material," Weng said.
On Friday, Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (
But DPP legislative whip Lin Feng-hsi (
Echoing Lin's views, another DPP legislator, Tsai Huang-liang (
Tsai said that betel nut planting was just one of the causes of soil erosion and mudslides, and that he hoped that the Cabinet would conduct a further investigation before proposing measures that risked "sacrificing betel nut farmers' rights."
Lin said that the party's legislative caucus had scheduled a meeting with Chang and Council of Agriculture chairman Chen Chih-huang (
In addition, head of the Cabinet's typhoon reconstruction task force, Chen Chin-huang (
Head of the National Fire Administration, Chao Kang (
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS