PRIORITIES: While the EPA is to allocate NT$6 billion to purchase new garbage trucks and uniforms, workers said that ensuring safety should be a more important concern
Taiopei Times
Date:Aug 15, 2019
By: Lin Chia-nan / Staff reporter
Dozens of garbage collectors yesterday pressed the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA)
Union members raise their fists outside the Environmental Protection Administration in Taipei yesterday as Federation of Environmental Workers’ Unions chairman Su Chia-yuan, front left, hands a petition to Department of Waste Management Director-General Lai Ying-ying.
Photo: Liu Li-jen, Taipei Times
The protest came on the heels of Premier Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) announcement on Tuesday that the EPA would allocate NT$6 billion (US$191.1 million) to purchase new uniforms for garbage collectors, install new shower facilities and washing machines at their workplaces, and subsidize local municipalities to replace old garbage trucks with new ones.
Su made the announcement before EPA officials were to meet with waste collectors at Taipei’s Grand Hotel.
However, several representatives of waste collectors’ unions protesting outside the EPA’s office in Taipei said that the government did not understand their “real, urgent needs.”
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