Budget cuts would greatly hinder the Central Weather Administration’s (CWA) ability to provide daily weather forecasts and undermine the Highway Bureau’s efforts to boost the use of public transportation, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said yesterday.
The legislature has eliminated about NT$610 million (US$18.6 million) from the ministry’s budget and frozen another NT$11.7 billion.
A large percentage of the eliminated budget would have been used to invest in new transportation facilities and upgrading existing ones, the ministry said.
Photo: CNA
About NT$6.86 billion of the Highway Bureau’s budget has been frozen by lawmakers, the highest amount among all agencies under the ministry, it said.
The frozen funds include NT$2 billion that was allocated to improve highways and vehicle management systems, and NT$4.86 billion to build and maintain highways.
The legilsature also froze NT$7.47 billion and NT$3.37 billion from the Tourism Administration’s and CWA’s budgets respectively, it said.
The ministry could only access the frozen funding after securing the legislature’s approval.
“However, the opposition parties have set stringent criteria to unfreeze the funding. Failure to release the funds would make it difficult for the ministry to implement policies as planned,” it said in a statement.
The ministry held a news conference in Taipei yesterday to show how agencies would be affected by the slashed budget.
“In the past few years, we have built many stations to observe and forecast severe weather. We halso use a supercomputer to provide more accurate weather forecasts. We are planning to incorporate artificial intelligence in our forecasts for severe weather. The budget cut, which reduces funding for utility fees, equipment maintenance fees and other key expenses at the CWA, would prevent the supercomputer from being able to offer data instantly and would compromise the data quality,” CWA Administrator Lu Kuo-chen (呂國臣) said.
The CWA said that the budget cut would also create obstacles for its plan to build new facilities to accommodate servers for the supercomputer in the weather station in Hsinchu County, adding that its plan to build seventh, eighth and ninth-generation supercomputers would have to be postponed.
The agency had planned to lay an undersea cable in the waters south of Taiwan to detect earthquakes, but the budget cut would impede its construction and even compromise the maintenance of existing cables, it said.
The cut would also affect the regular maintenance of 700 weather and earthquake observation stations nationwide, it added.
In addition to the NT$6.86 billion frozen by the legislature, the Highway Bureau’s budget was cut by NT$2.65 billion.
The bureau would no longer be able to subsidize city or freeway buses, which could prompt bus operators to cancel some unprofitable lines, Highway Bureau Director-General Chen Wen-jui (陳文瑞) said.
The reduced funding for utilities would compromise service quality at motor vehicle offices nationwide, Chen said.
The bureau would also be left without extra funding to improve the designs of bottlenecks at certain highway sections and maintain 5,300km of highways and expressways, he said.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
RSS