Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (???) has been asked to stay on to supervise the implementation of plans to strengthen Taiwan’s power grid, after asking the premier to discipline her for a massive power outage last week, a Cabinet spokesman said Monday.
However, the resignation of two top executives at state-run utility Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower) — Chairman Yang Wei-fuu (???) and President Chung Bin-li (???) — over the incident which caused huge industrial losses was approved, Cabinet spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (???) told reporters.
Yang’s post will be taken over by Deputy Economics Minister Tseng Wen-sheng (???), while Taipower Vice President Wang Yao-ting (???) will replace Chung as president of the power supplier, Lo said.
Lo cited Premier Su Tseng-chang’s (???) instructions after Wang delivered a report on the incident compiled by the ministry, which supervises Taipower, to Su at the Executive Yuan earlier in the day.
The spokesman said Su recognized Wang’s contributions over the past few years in executing the government’s policies such as those on energy transformation, combating drought and international trade talks.
While attributing the power outage to human error and poor management supervision at Taipower as the investigation into the incident indicated, Su said the most important task facing Wang now is to carry out reforms to the power grid as soon as possible, Lo cited the premier as saying.
Su also instructed Wang to supervise Taipower’s drafting of a power grid fortification proposal to be presented within six months as a way of taking responsibility for the incident.
“Not to repeat the same mistake is what showing responsibility to the people involves,” Su told Wang, according to Lo.
According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) report, the power outage on March 3 was caused by human error in operating a switchgear at Hsinta Power Plant in Kaohsiung, the third such incident in the past nine months, following power outages on May 13 and May 17 last year.
Wang once again offered to take full responsibility for the latest event, which affected over 5.49 million households and businesses around Taiwan last Thursday, according to Lo.
The outage caused an estimated NT$6 billion in losses to companies in industrial parks around the country, with the petrochemical sector the hardest hit, MOEA figures showed.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel