Vietnam has demanded that Taiwanese authorities investigate the cause of a fire that killed six Vietnamese workers at a Sican Co factory in Taoyuan on Thursday, after the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday listed names of people believed to have died in the blaze.
The fire broke out at about 2am on Thursday.
Investigators said that the bodies had not yet been formally identified as of yesterday, as they were burned beyond recognition.
Taoyuan police have asked the relatives of six Vietnamese workers to come to Taiwan as soon as possible to help with formal identification of the bodies using DNA testing, the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office said.
The ministry yesterday in a statement listed the victims’ names and called for Taiwan to expedite its investigation.
Five other Vietnamese workers escaped with injuries and were hospitalized. Four of them have since been discharged.
The Vietnam Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei has asked the brokerage firm in Vietnam that recruited the workers to help take care of the injured and to negotiate with the employers and brokers to ensure the rights of the deceased and injured workers, the Vietnamese ministry said.
Sican chairman Chen Hung-ju (陳宏如) and factory chief Hsieh Chao-yi (謝朝怡) were yesterday released on NT$1 million (US$33,342) bail each, after being detained on Thursday night on charges of negligent homicide, but were barred from leaving the country.
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
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