Old illegal factories on farmland cannot be demolished, temporary registrations extended, civic groups protest laissez-faire pollution
There are as many as 130,000 illegal factories on farmland across Taiwan, causing severe farmland pollution. In the past, under the name of bringing them under management, more than 7,000 illegal factories were allowed to obtain temporary registration certificates. But eight years have passed since the Factory Management and Guidance Act (referred to as the Factory Guidance Act), and fewer than 50 factories have passed guidance. Many outsiders question whether temporary registration is equivalent to letting operators become legal on the spot.
With the deadline for extending temporary registrations about to expire, legislators Lin Tai-hua, Hsu Shu-hua, and Wang Hui-mei previously proposed amendments intending to allow temporary-registration factories unlimited extensions. In the end, it was decided that the Ministry of Economic Affairs would consolidate the matter and discuss it across ministries with the Ministry of the Interior, the Council of Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Administration to propose an Executive Yuan version of amendments to the Factory Guidance Act. But recently, Executive Yuan Minister Without Portfolio Chang Ching-sen went south to Lukang and declared that the central government would accelerate amendments to the Factory Guidance Act, reopen acceptance of temporary registration applications, and extend the guidance period.
Facing no solution to the existing problem of illegal factories, and with the central government intending to continue letting illegal factories become legal on the spot, the Citizen of the Earth Foundation joined 30 civil groups today (the 31st) to hold a press conference and put forward four demands, including: under the Factory Guidance Act, there should be no loosening, no extension, and no legalization on the spot for illegal factories on farmland; medium- and high-pollution illegal factories should be dealt with first and required to move into industrial zones within a deadline; illegal factories newly added after May 20, 2016 should be reported and demolished immediately; and the detailed planning of the policy for developing special zones for illegal factories should be made public and include citizen participation mechanisms.
In addition, regarding the central government's long delay in announcing the second wave of the report-and-demolish-immediately list, Taiwan Rural Front member Hsu Wen-feng also questioned, "Will report-and-demolish-immediately actually continue to be implemented? When we report new factories continuing to be built, local governments take no action and do not dare to demolish them." He stressed that report-and-demolish-immediately must be carried out and not become a slogan. The original purpose of setting this stop-loss point was to stop the bleeding first. "If local governments continue to do nothing and allow new factory buildings to continue being built, there will be no bleeding-stopping effect at all."
Lu Chen-hui explained that they hope county and city governments will propose cleanup plans, but the deadline involves each county and city's implementation capacity, so no exact time can be promised. However, the central government has already formed an inter-ministerial group to carry it out, with the Council of Agriculture as the main responsible agency. Yun Jui-lung also explained that for illegal factories reported and demolished immediately after May 20, if local governments lack funds, they are also subsidized by the Agricultural Development Fund.