After failing to front up to prosecutors yesterday for questioning over allegations of graft in the construction of an incinerator, Yunlin County Commissioner Chang Jung-wei (張榮味) received a second summons from the Yunlin District Prosecutor's Office.
Some Yunlin County councilors expressed support for Chang yesterday, while environmentalists insist that alleged kickbacks from the project are typical of how public construction projects are handled in this country.
Following a raid on Chang's residence and office on Friday, prosecutors summoned him to appear for questioning yesterday. However, Chang did not respond to the summons and did not appear at the offices of the prosecutors.
Chang's sister, Chang Li-shan (
"Su tried to be an intermediary for the incinerator project but failed. I suspect that the prosecutor's investigation was influenced by the opinions of Su," Chang Li-shan said.
Su, who is believed to be interested in running for county commissioner at the next election, dismissed the accusation.
"It's absurd. I have never known a prosecutor by that name," Su said.
She added that she had opposed the incinerator project for years and had never been involved in land purchases for the project.
Responding to Chang Li-shan's accusation, Yunlin Chief Prosecutor Hung Shao-wen (
He said that prosecutors would continue to ask Chang Jung-wei to appear, and that if he did not eventually show up he would be detained.
In debate at the county council, councilor Cheng Kuo-yi (
Environmentalists said, however, that it was a shame that the project had led to such an embarrassing situation.
"We didn't see any government mechanisms doing a responsible evaluation of the project. The remote location of the Linnei Incinerator made the cost of transporting household waste three times greater than that for incinerators elsewhere in the country," Herlin Hsieh (謝和霖) of the Taiwan Watch Institute told the Taipei Times yesterday.
Hsieh said that the environmental impact assessment for the pro-ject was conducted sloppily because no one had asked questions about the project's high unit cost for treating household waste -- about NT$2,100 per tonne.
Hsieh said the Linnei Incinerator was just the tip of the iceberg, because projects with similar problems existed in other jurisdictions. For example, Hsieh said, the unit cost for an incinerator under trial in Taitung County was about NT$2,300 per tonne. The standard unit cost for other municipal incinerators treating household waste is less than NT$1,000.
About 90 percent of the construction of the Linnei Incinerator, the daily treatment limit of which is 600 tonnes, has been completed. The NT$3.3 million project is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year.
The Yunlin Prosecutor's Office said the investigation into the alleged bribery began in June, when an anonymous Yunlin resident reported that county government officials -- including Chang Jung-wei -- had accepted a sizable bribe.
Since June, eight contractors and officials have been detained by prosecutors in relation to the case.
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