Taiwan Church News
3187 Edition
March 25-31. 2013
Headline News

Reported by Simon Lin

Written by Lydia Ma

Fuxing Borough in Taoyuan District, Kaohsiung, is located in an area where two rivers converge. On June 11, 2012, torrential rains caused the river to overflow and 12 houses belonging to indigenous families were washed away because subpar construction work caused the river embankment to break. According to a recent update from Fuxing Borough director, Tu Yao-shun, the government has ignored residents’ welfare and their demands for government compensation. Furthermore, restoration of the embankment has been delayed again and again. In view of the approaching rainy season, local residents are very worried about their safety and very angry about being treated as second-class citizens.

Tu, who is also a member of Fuxing Presbyterian Church, told Taiwan Church News that the national government doesn’t seem to care about the safety of indigenous families living in the area and government agencies have been passing the buck. However, local residents have been living in fear every day because they are worried that history will repeat itself when the rainy season comes. Tu said that these indigenous families have convened meetings and created a self-help association to protect themselves due to the government’s unresponsiveness.

South Bunun Presbytery’s pastor Rev. Lituan has been very concerned about the situation on the ground and has already reported these residents’ plight to the PCT General Assembly. According to Lituan, World Vision Taiwan is planning to build some emergency shelters further upstream. However, lack of funding and other legal issues have prevented it from starting this project. World Vision is currently negotiating with the city government and seeking partner organizations to help them in this project.

According to local native residents whose homes have been destroyed, the soil upstream has become loose ever since Typhoon Morakot, resulting in severe landslides whenever it rains. In the past 3 years alone, the riverbed has grown 30 meters taller. Strangely, though the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past 3 years to fix and clear the riverbed, the situation has not improved. They argue that the reason is because though backhoes continually dig up rubble and place it aside, the rain eventually washes the rubble back into the riverbed, making all cleaning efforts pointless.

Though local residents have demanded change, nothing has been done and the riverbed continues to grow taller and taller. This situation has many residents wondering if there is some sort of conspiracy between government officials and contractors to drag out the cleaning project indefinitely and get more money for it. Hence, residents are urging that public investigators be called to look into the affair.