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Taipower executives offer to resign over power outages
Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) executives say they are ready to take responsibility for Thursday's islandwide power outage - with the company's Chairman Yang Wei-fu and President Chung Bin-li saying they will step down over the incident.
Taipower reported that nearly 5.5 million households across Taiwan were left with no electricity on Thursday, after a malfunctioning switch at Kaohsiung's Xin-da Power Plant led to roughly a third of the island's power being wiped out.
Kaohsiung and Tainan lost power entirely, while northern and central Taiwan also saw waves of suspended electricity service. By the end of the day, power had been restored to most areas.
An initial investigation into yesterday's blackout indicates that human error was involved in the operation of switchgear at the Hsing-Da Power Plant in Kaohsiung which caused the power grid to malfunction.
Economics Minister Wang Mei-hua is vowing to take full responsibility for the outage that cut power to nearly five and a half million households. Wang also says the government plans to compensate households and industrial users who were affected by the outage.
Wang has also requested that Premier Su Tseng-chang take appropriate disciplinary action against relevant officials or Taipower employees over the nationwide blackout.
Cabinet spokesman Luo Bing-cheng says the premier has made the need to restore power and ensuring the same mistakes do not happen again as top priorities.
But Luo also says the premier has instructed the economics ministry and Taipower to thoroughly investigate the outage and present a report within three days identifying the cause of the incident before taking any disciplinary action.
Legislators from Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang Party have demanded that the minister of the Ministry of Economic Affairs resign to take responsibility for the outage.
