Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) reaffirmed the government’s target of increasing the rate of sewage drainage by 3 percent a year, as he urged officials to come up with measures to maintain the goal, Executive Yuan spokesperson Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said yesterday.
Jiang issued the directive after Deputy Minister of the Interior Lin Tzu-ling (林慈玲) presented a briefing at a Cabinet meeting on a project to expand the sewage network.
According to the briefing, the proportion of households connected to the sewage system was 32.1 percent last year, an increase of 9.6 percent from 2009.
In terms of the percentage of the population served by waste water treatment plants, the ratio rose to 62.99 percent last year, from 48.66 percent in 2009, the briefing said.
The briefing showed that the government has achieved the 3 percent goal, as stated in President Ma Ying-jeou’s 2008 campaign platform, over the past four years.
Lin said that the government invested NT$162.5 billion (US$5.44 billion) over the past 16 years in increasing the number of households connected to the sewage system from about 3 percent in 1992 to about 20 percent in 2008, while an estimated NT$700 billion would be required to reach 100 percent coverage.
In a related development, Jiang instructed the Ministry of the Interior to study the possibility of reclaiming water from wastewater treatment plants and reusing the treated water as an alternative source in case of a water shortage, Cheng said.
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Eleven people, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸), were taken into custody today for questioning regarding the evasion of compulsory military service and document forgery, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. Eight of the people, including Wang, are suspected of evading military service, while three are suspected of forging medical documents to assist them, the report said. They are all being questioned by police and would later be transferred to the prosecutors’ office for further investigation. Three men surnamed Lee (李), Chang (張) and Lin (林) are suspected of improperly assisting conscripts in changing their military classification from “stand-by
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