Election battle focus shifts to 'mosquito halls'

Three Taipei City Council members from the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) held a press conference yesterday to criticize that the city government has spent more than NT$64.4 million on a tourism theater but has never held any events at the building.

They criticized the municipal Department of Cultural Affairs for leaving the unused structure as a “mosquito hall” — meaning creating a huge building with taxpayers' money as a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

The DPP council members held Vice Mayor Lee Yung-ping responsible because the project of renovating a building in the Taipei Children's Recreation Center on Zhongshan North Road in Yuanshan into a theater was started by Lee when she served as department head handling cultural affairs.

Wang Yi-hsiang, a spokesman at the department, said the building should not be dubbed as a “mosquito hall” because the construction work is not completed yet.

He explained that the tourism theater was originally scheduled for completion in October last year.

But the date was postponed because many residents and members of the environmental protection groups had suggested conservation of more than 90 percent of trees and green belts at the site.

The revision to the project will postpone the opening of the new theater until late February next year, Wang said.

He said the theater will be part of the Hakka culture theme park to be built at the site of the Taipei Children's Recreation Center which was already partially moved to the district adjacent to the Taipei Zoo in Muzha area.

There will certainly be cultural events and other public activities held at the new theater, Wang added.

Some candidates running for city council seats in the camp of the ruling Kuomintang said the real and largest “mosquito hall” in Taiwan is actually located in southern Kaohsiung City.

They said the mammoth sport dome built at a cost of nearly NT$7 billion under the DPP administration has been left idle after hosting the 2009 World Games.

Officials at the Kaohsiung City Government said it is impossible to hold large-scale activities everyday at the huge building.

They expressed the hope that the central government to transfer the management of the facilities to the municipal government so that they may work out long-term plans for maximum utilization of the arena.

There are presently scores of public structures built by county and municipal governments years earlier throughout Taiwan classified as “mosquito halls” because of exceptionally low utilization rate.

The current administration has launched an islandwide project to solicit ideas and suggestions for better use of such structures for public purposes.

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