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進入《TAIPEI TIMES 焦點》 KMT lawmakers, premier square off
Premier Lin Chuan answers lawmakers’ questions in the Legislative Yuan yesterday. Photo: CNA
QUESTIONS: Grilled over the Cabinet’s ‘Forward-looking Infrastructure Construction Project’ announced on Monday, Premier Lin Chuan turned testy in some of his replies
By Alison Hsiao / Staff reporter
Chinese Nationalist Party （KMT） lawmakers’ claims that the Cabinet’s “Forward-looking Infrastructure Construction Project” was rebottled wine and a pork-barrel scheme by the Democratic Progressive Party （DPP） government appeared to rile Premier Lin Chuan （林全） yesterday.
The Cabinet on Monday announced the NT$880 billion （US$28.9 billion） project to build — over the next eight years — infrastructure that the nation needs to develop over the next three decades.
The project is to focus on “green” energy, water resources, new railway tracks, digital infrastructure and urban-rural development, National Development Council Minister Chen Tain-jy （陳添枝） said on Monday.
A special NT$50 billion budget has been allocated for “green” energy infrastructure, aimed at ensuring the nation’s sustainable development by increasing the contribution of “green” energy to electricity generation from 5.1 percent last year to 20 percent in 2025 and transforming Taiwan into a nuclear-free homeland by 2025, Executive Yuan spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung （徐國勇） said on Monday.
The plan calls for NT$250 billion in water resource infrastructure so that Taiwan will no longer suffer water shortages and flooding and give everyone access to clean drinking water, Hsu added.
However, the KMT caucus panned the plan and the Cabinet’s news conference, saying the ministers “had no idea what they were talking about and how much economic benefit the project could bring.”
KMT Legislator Alicia Wang （王育敏）, the caucus secretary-general, said it was clear that the project was aimed at buying votes for the DPP, given that the plan was “crude, immature, visionless and would have a limited effect on boosting the economy.”
“The whole plan is like a makeshift assemblage of empty promises, without taking local characteristics and actual needs into account,” she said.
During a legislative question-and-answer session yesterday, KMT Legislator Hsu Shu-hua （許叔華） asked Lin why the “Wu River’s Niaozueitan Artificial Lake” in Nantou County was listed in the plan when it had been part of former president Ma Ying-jeou’s （馬英九） “Love Taiwan 12 Major Construction Plans” to run from 2015 to 2024.
Water infrastructure was part of the project, and plans to deal with flooding and sewage treatment, if needed, would be drawn up, Lin said before Hsu interrupted him to demand the government “stop cooking the books with the former administration’s plans and come up with your own.”
An apparently annoyed Lin said railway track construction should be halted if Hsu Shu-hua’s logic was to be applied across-the-board.
“There is no point in distinguishing whose projects they are, as they are all national construction plans. Half-completed construction projects are not [in the public interest],” he said.
When KMT Legislator Apollo Chen （陳學聖） asked how the government could reconcile its call for pension reform while presenting a NT$1 trillion infrastruction plan, Lins said the budget for national projects should not be mixed with the potential bankruptcy of the national pension systems, “which should have been faced squarely 10 years ago.”
Additional reporting by CNA
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
