County Councilor Clears Path With Machete, Citing Forestry Bureau's Inaction

Frustrated by the Forestry Bureau's perceived passive approach, Penghu County Councilor Hsu Yu-kai personally cleared a path with a machete to expedite the construction of a bicycle route. The proposed path aims to connect Huxi Township's Tanbian Village to the North Ring Road, completing an existing route and linking to the Xuantian Shangdi Temple for tourism.

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The Forestry Bureau is an agency that cannot keep up with public opinion.

Hsu Yu-kai has been working with the Penghu County Government for some time on this project. However, the Forestry Bureau's requirement that no powered machinery be used for clearing the overgrown area, which contains no valuable trees, has stalled progress. Hsu criticized this as out of touch with public needs.

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It's strange that the Forestry Bureau can use excavators and other machines to clear land for tree planting, but not for Tanbian.

He was forced to manually clear the dense silver wattle and weeds with a machete, carving out a rough path. Hsu questioned the bureau's inconsistency, pointing out that they used excavators and other machinery to clear land for a tree-planting event in Guoye Village earlier this year. He accused the bureau of bureaucratic thinking that obstructs local development, likening the situation to the idiom "only the governor is allowed to set fire, while the common people are forbidden to light lamps."

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Bureaucratic thinking has become the biggest obstacle to local development.