News
Taipower president and chairman resign
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.
But the cabinet did approve the resignations of two top executives at the state-run Taiwan Power Company (Taipower): its Chairman Yang Wei-fu and President Chung Bin-li.
Yang's post will be taken over by Deputy Economics Minister Tseng Wen-sheng, while Taipower's current Vice President Wang Yao-ting will replace Chung as president of the power supplier.
The blackout, which caused an estimated NT$6 billion in losses to companies in industrial parks around the country, was attributed to human error and poor management supervision.
Premier Su Tseng-chang has said the biggest task facing the economics minister is to carry out reforms to the power grid as soon as possible.
Wang has also been tasked with drafting a power grid fortification proposal, to be presented in half a year's time to take responsibility for the incident.
The power outage on 3 March was caused by human error in operating a switchgear at Hsinta Power Plant in Kaohsiung.
It was the third such incident in the past nine months, following power outages on 13 May and 17 May last year.
