Greater Kaohsiung City Council’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus is suing Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) for dereliction of duty that resulted in the loss of lives, while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus on the council has countered with legal action against Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), a former Kaohsiung mayor, for “illegitimately” approving the burial of pipelines.
The gas pipeline explosions on July 31 and Aug. 1 killed 30 people and injured 310.
The KMT caucus, led by council speaker Hsu Kun-yuan (許崑源), went to the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office to call for the prosecution of Chen and four other city officials — the deputy mayor, the heads of the Environmental Protection Bureau and the Fire Bureau and the Labor Affairs Bureau director-general — accusing Chen’s administration of trying to cover up their mistakes after the blasts and of wrongful death through their dereliction of duty.
Photo: Wang Jung-hsiang, Taipei Times
Chen said she respects the KMT councilors’ action and stressed that prosecutors had already been probing the matter, and that the city government had provided all the needed information.
The DPP caucus also went to the prosecutors’ office, saying the cause of the disaster lay in faulty planning years ago by Wu, who the DPP said sanctioned the illegal burial of the pipelines carrying petrochemical materials in residential and commercial areas.
The DPP councilors accused Wu of corruption and unlawfully favoring certain petrochemical companies, including LCY Chemical Corp, an alleged culprit of the explosions.
The legal action taken by the KMT was in response to a group of protestors who lodged a complaint with Hsu on Monday.
Scores of people allegedly from explosion-stricken areas besieged the council building on Monday protesting Chen’s handling of the disaster and the aftermath.
They filed a complaint with Hsu, who promised them that he would call for a charge against the city government.
However, the protesters were countered by another group of people supporting the mayor and questioning the protesters’ identity as explosion-affected residents.
A village warden accompanying the protesters was identified as Kuo Feng-mo (郭豐模), the KMT leader of Linya District’s (苓雅) Hexu Village (和煦里), which was not affected by the blasts.
Kuo defended his presence by saying that he was once the chairman of the local village chief club and was there to lead those who need assistance to plead for help.
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck off Tainan at 11:47am today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 32.3km northeast of Tainan City Hall at a depth of 7.3km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Tainan and Chiayi County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Chiayi City and County, and Yunlin County, while it was measured as 2 in Kaohsiung, Nantou County, Changhua County, Taitung County and offshore Penghu County, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of
Weather conditions across Taiwan are expected to remain stable today, but cloudy to rainy skies are expected from tomorrow onward due to increasing moisture in the atmosphere, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). Daytime highs today are expected to hit 25-27°C in western Taiwan and 22-24°C in the eastern counties of Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung, data on the CWA website indicated. After sunset, temperatures could drop to 16-17°C in most parts of Taiwan. For tomorrow, precipitation is likely in northern Taiwan as a cloud system moves in from China. Daytime temperatures are expected to hover around 25°C, the CWA said. Starting Monday, areas
Taiwan has recorded its first fatal case of Coxsackie B5 enterovirus in 10 years after a one-year-old boy from southern Taiwan died from complications early last month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. CDC spokesman Lo Yi-chun (羅一鈞) told a news conference that the child initially developed a fever and respiratory symptoms before experiencing seizures and loss of consciousness. The boy was diagnosed with acute encephalitis and admitted to intensive care, but his condition deteriorated rapidly, and he passed away on the sixth day of illness, Lo said. This also marks Taiwan’s third enterovirus-related death this year and the first severe
A Taiwanese software developer has created a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model to help people use AI without exposing sensitive data, project head Huang Chung-hsiao (黃崇校) said yesterday. Huang, a 55-year-old coder leading a US-based team, said that concerns over data privacy and security in popular generative AIs such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek motivated him to develop a personal AI assistant named “Mei.” One of the biggest security flaws with cloud-based algorithms is that users are required to hand over personal information to access the service, giving developers the opportunity to mine user data, he said. For this reason, many government agencies and
RSS