The legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee yesterday approved a series of draft amendments to the Water Pollution Control Act, seeking to impose stiffer penalties on firms found to have illegally discharged wastewater or sewage.
If the draft amendments clear the legislative floor, firms that discharge wastewater, or arbitrarily dump or fail to properly handle sewage will be subject to a maximum fine of NT$20 million (US$658,000), a significant increase from NT$60,000.
Businesses could also face mandatory shutdowns and rescission of their discharge permits if they fail to make the necessary improvements within a statutory period.
In addition, owners of firms that emit potentially hazardous wastewater without permission could be sentenced to as many as seven years in prison, which would be commutable to a NT$20 million fine if the transgression causes illness, with the maximum length of prison terms increasing to between 10 years and life should illicit conduct lead to disability or death.
The preliminary passage of the draft amendments was prompted primarily by the Kaohsiung District Court’s decision in October last year to issue a fine of just NT$3 million to Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc, the world’s largest IC packaging and testing services provider for dumping massive amounts of wastewater into the city’s Houjin River.
Other major changes proposed by the draft amendments include increasing the maximum fine from NT$120,000 to NT$600,000 for proprietors of establishments engaged in animal husbandry who are caught illegally discharging sewage; offering whistleblowers a certain percentage of any fines as a reward; and barring firms found violating the act from receiving government benefits for three years.
Attorney and environmentalist Thomas Chan lauded the draft bill’s preliminary passage, saying that he was particularly pleased to see Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators finally willing to join the right side.
Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan director Tsai Hue-hsun said she was glad to see environmentalists’ push for the amendments finally coming to fruition.
However, Tsai said she was disappointed by the Council of Agriculture’s insistence on not setting the maximum fine for animal husbandry firms caught breaking the rules at NT$1.2 million, which the council said was a bid to protect small businesses.
“If the council is willing to offer fallow subsidies to rice farmers, why not use government resources to help small pig farms improve their wastewater treatment systems?” Tsai said.
Meanwhile, the Finance Committee approved an amendment to adjust downward the ceiling of revolving interest rates that domestic credit card and cash-advance card issuers can charge cardholders from 20 to 15 per cent.
According to the Civil Law, the ceiling for annual interest rates is generally set at 20 per cent for the private sector. In a bid to ease the burden on hundreds of thousands of cardholders, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) last year issued an administrative order asking card issuers to keep their revolving interest rates at 16 per cent or lower.
Some lawmakers, led by KMT Legislator Chen Ken-te, had proposed setting the ceiling as low as 12 per cent.
“Even at the commission’s request, I doubt if all the banks have followed the administrative order,” Chen said yesterday.
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