TAIPEI: The Executive Yuan has approved a NT$100 billion ($3.03 billion) budget to reconstruct within three years areas destroyed by Typhoon Morakot.

Hosting a press conference yesterday morning, deputy interior chief Lin Chung-sen said the principles of flexibility, efficiency and simplification will be applied in the approval process for reconstruction and resettlement projects, though the safety would not be compromised.

The Executive Yuan used the reconstruction budget used in a deadly earthquake in 1999 as reference for this project.

The 7.6-magnitude quake on September 12, 1999, claimed around 2,400 lives and was the deadliest natural disaster in Taiwan.

If public land is chosen to resettle victims, the land will be given free of charge. Land-use processes will be simplified and laws relaxed to expedite resettlement, he said.

"So long as those land plots are professionally determined to be safe for habitation, regulations involving rezoning or land development will be relaxed," Lin said.

Some NT$6.6 billion ($200 million) have already been granted to local governments to repair public infrastructure damaged in the flooding and mudslide, he added.

One key element of the reconstruction is to outlaw habitation in mountain hillsides and other areas that put residents at risk in typhoons or other natural disasters. So community relocation may be inevitable for some dangerous zones, Lin said, adding that the special reconstruction bill has outlined a mechanism for compensation and land acquisition for people who have to be relocated.

"Premier" Liu Chao-shiuan announced yesterday that the government's post-typhoon response has now entered the resettlement and reconstruction phase, as rescues have more or less been completed.

Liu emphasized that the handover of tasks by government units of various levels must be a "seamless" process so that reconstruction in flood-affected areas can be launched smoothly.

Agencies

(HK Edition 08/21/2009 page2)