A township chief in southern Taiwan said Wednesday that if a batch of prefabricated houses donated by China in the wake of Typhoon Morakot prove to be safe, the townspeople are willing to move into them. Lai Hsien-ho, the township head of Jiadong in Pingtung County, which was hit hard by the typhoon Aug. 7-9, did a swift U-turn just one day after saying the townspeople had misgivings about the prefab houses from China in the wake of reports that the units contain high levels of formaldehyde, a known carcinogenic. The houses arrived in Kaohsiung Harbor Tuesday and were transported directly to Jiadong to help those displaced by Morakot. Lai said later that day that the townspeople were worried that the formaldehyde levels in the prefabs could be harmful and therefore refused to move into them. Lai said Wednesday that the Pingtung county government has been put in charge of the temporary homes and that county officials had told him that the units, which were temporarily placed along roadsides, will be tested to make sure they are safe for habitation. 'I asked the people of my town, and they also said that if tests prove that the houses are safe, they are willing to move in, ' he added. Meanwhile, Maa Shaw-chang, deputy secretary-general of the semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation, said Wednesday that his Chinese counterpart, Ma Xiaoguang of China's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), had notified him a day earlier that the first 100 of the houses contain 0.02ppm formaldehyde and therefore do not pose a health hazard. Maa said that although in China the safety limit for prefab houses is 0.08 ppm formaldehyde per square meter, the houses shipped to Taiwan contain the far lower level of 0.02ppm, according to ARATS. Asked when the remaining 900 units will arrive, Maa said that this will be decided based on the needs of the typhoon-affected cities and counties. 