Taipei, April 2 (CNA) Kaohsiung City government officials have ordered Southeast Cement Corp. and its contractor Chiung Te Construction to halt work on Saturday at seven sites for non-compliance of several building and safety laws and regulations.
The city government had set up a special team to conduct inspections of the projects, which are managed by Southeast Cement Corp. and Chiung Te Construction, following a demolition accident involving a storage silo at the former's Kaohsiung plant on Friday.
The silo collapsed during the demolition and hit a nearby transmission tower which then cut off the flow of electricity to trains operated by Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp. (THSRC) and the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA), resulting in the suspension of train services for seven hours which affected about 120,000 passengers.
The inspections found the construction firms in violation of several laws and regulations regarding occupational safety, air pollution prevention, and building codes, for which the stop-work order was issued, according to the city government's statement.
The team also decided to impose the maximum penalty on the firms for the violations of the related laws and regulations, to serve as a reminder to all other building companies to comply with the rules to ensure safety, according to the statement.
The team didn't specify the amount of the penalty that must be paid by the group.
At one of the projects, the team said it had found that the firms had started construction, with grout being injected into the first floor of a building, at a site in Renwu District before it had filed a notice of commencement of work as required by the Building Act.
At the same site, the project owners did not install carwash platforms at the entrances and exits for vehicles that transport potential fugitive dust emission sources, and also did not use pressure washer equipment to clean vehicles, as stipulated under related regulations aimed at reducing air pollutants in construction sites, according to the statement.
(By Tseng Yi-ning, Lee Hui-ting and Shih Hsiu-chuan)