People First Party (PFP) legislators yesterday appealed to lawmakers from other opposition parties and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to put aside their differences and jointly stipulate special statutes on the restoration of the area in Greater Kaohsiung affected by last week’s gas pipeline explosions.
The Executive Yuan could start drafting a chemical disasters response act to integrate the government’s resources to rescue people hurt in such incidents, the PFP lawmakers said.
PFP Legislator Thomas Lee (李桐豪) told a press conference in Taipei that he hoped Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) could brief legislators on how the government responded to the disaster and also review its actions in addressing the situation.
Photo: Liu Hsin-der, Taipei Times
Lee said he might propose a third plenary session to review the special statutes.
“The Legislative Yuan will do everything to help the draft the special statutes,” Lee said. “We hope that factories that manufacture chemical products can learn how to handle disasters caused by chemicals.”
Lee said that gas pipeline issues have not been addressed for three or four decades, and the regulations should be thoroughly evaluated.
PFP Legislator Chen Yi-chieh (陳怡潔) said the nation does not have an agency similar to the US’ Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has personnel professionally trained to handle chemical hazards and standardized operating procedures to deal with related disasters.
The government also lacks a chain of command to direct and monitor such hazards, she said.
She said that local governments should establish agencies to deal with chemical hazards and employ trained professionals to oversee disaster management, adding that firefighters need to be educated more on the nature of different chemicals to make correct decisions and reduce casualties.
Kaohsiung City Councilor Wu Yi-cheng (吳益政) said that the central and local governments should work together to help petrochemical companies to relocate so that residents can feel safe.
Democratic Progressive Party legislators Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and Lin Tai-hua (林岱樺) held a separate press conference in Taipei, calling for the formation of a legislative subcommittee to investigate the explosions.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS