Part of a food aid shipment to Haiti in February contained rice "unfit even for animal consumption," a Council of Agriculture official said yesterday.
The problem came to light when Haitian officials complained about the subpar rice to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which in turn informed the council on May 24, said Tsao Shao-hwei (
Tsao said the case has been turned over to the police, who suspect malfeasance on the part of factory owners.
Council officials said the poor rice had been traced to a processing plant in Yunlin County.
The ten 50kg bags that were found to contain poor-quality rice in the 420-tonne shipment were from the Chun-ku Rice Processing Plant.
The plant said that substandard rice had been mixed with good rice by mistake because its foreign laborers had misunderstood instructions that were not given in their mother tongue.
Tsao voiced skepticism at that explanation.
"The rice the factory attempted to pass off as acceptable quality is so poor that it was immediately obvious upon visual inspection -- the rice had turned yellow and black," Tsao told reporters yesterday. "It would be hard for the factory to pass this off as a mistake."
High-quality unprocessed rice was delivered by the AFA to the plant to process before being shipped to Haiti.
"We strongly suspect they sold some of the good rice, substituted poor-quality rice for part of the shipment and pocketed the profit," Tsao said.
"Our contract with the plant ended on June 5. The results of the police investigation will decide whether plant officials will be found criminally culpable," he said.
Tsao said that Taiwan first started providing rice as foreign aid in 2002. The amount of rice donated varies from year to year depending on the level of demand from famine-stricken countries and has ranged from 20,000 tonnes to more than 60,000 tonnes per year.
Ministry spokeswoman Phoebe Yeh (
"We believe that this is an isolated case ... but we will pay attention to prevent it from happening again," she said.
Additional reporting by Jewel Huang
Rain is to increase from Wednesday morning as Severe Tropical Storm Kong-Rey approaches, with sea warnings to be issued as early as tomorrow afternoon, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. As of 8am, Kong-Rey was 1,050km east-southeast of the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春) heading in a northwesterly direction toward Taiwan, CWA Forecast Center Director Lin Po-tung (林伯東) said. Rainfall is to increase from Wednesday morning, especially in northern Taiwan and Yilan County, he said. A sea warning is possible from tomorrow afternoon, while a land warning may be issued on Wednesday morning, he added. Kong-Rey may intensify into a moderate typhoon as it passes
Hong Kong singer Andy Lau’s (劉德華) concert in Taipei tonight has been cancelled due to Typhoon Kong-rei and is to be held at noon on Saturday instead, the concert organizer SuperDome said in a statement this afternoon. Tonight’s concert at Taipei Arena was to be the first of four consecutive nightly performances by Lau in Taipei, but it was called off at the request of Taipei Metro, the operator of the venue, due to the weather, said the organizer. Taipei Metro said the concert was cancelled out of consideration for the audience’s safety. The decision disappointed a number of Lau’s fans who had
Taiwan yesterday issued warnings to four Chinese coast guard vessels that intruded into restricted waters around the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen Islands, according to the Coast Guard Administration (CGA). The four China Coast Guard ships were detected approaching restricted waters south of Kinmen at around 2 pm yesterday, the CGA’s Kinmen-Matsu Branch said in a statement. The CGA said it immediately deployed four patrol boats to closely monitor the situation. When the Chinese ships with the hull numbers "14512," "14609," "14603" and "14602" separately entered the restricted waters off Fuhsing islet (復興嶼), Zhaishan (翟山), Sinhu (新湖) and Liaoluo (料羅) at 3 pm, the Taiwanese patrol
A former member of the US Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), formerly known as SEAL Team 6, said in an interview with Business Insider that the elite unit’s role in a Taiwan Strait conflict would be more limited than some might expect. The report follows an earlier one in September by the Financial Times, which said the “clandestine US Navy commando unit” has been training for missions to help Taiwan if it is invaded by China. “You don’t use a scalpel for a job a hammer can do,” the former Navy Seal said to Business Insider on condition of anonymity.
RSS