CHINA - F24 REPORT
Looking for culprits after the shock
Saturday 17 May 2008
Quake survivors wonder whether bad building construction was the cause of schools collapsing atop hundreds of children. President Jintao may investigate into malpractices. (View our correspondent Sébastien Le Belzic's recent reports below)
Saturday 17 May 2008
By AFPLocal residents have a simple answer for why the four-storey Juyuan Middle School collapsed during the China quake -- killing hundreds of children -- while nearby buildings remained standing.
"Look at the building materials they used," said one resident in this rural community in southwest China. "The cement wasn't mixed with water in the right proportion. There are not enough steel beams. The sand isn't clean."
Whether short cuts were taken to build schools has become a pressing issue following Monday's quake, as China grapples with the reality that so many children were among the more than 50,000 people thought killed in the disaster.
Close to 7,000 schools -- a disproportionately high number of buildings -- were destroyed in Sichuan province by the 7.9-magnitude quake, which struck in the afternoon when many students were in class or taking their daily naps.
Housing Minister Jiang Weixin on Friday announced a probe had been launched into whether shoddy work linked to corruption was to blame for the large number of schools toppled by the quake.
"Unfortunately we can't rule out that there may have been situations where people scrimped on workmanship and stinted on materials during the construction process and if so we will deal with any such problems strictly after an investigation," Jiang told a press conference in Beijing.
China's state media has already suggested that developers across the nation may have tried to maximise profits by using inferior materials or cutting back on necessary work while paying off corrupt officials to turn a blind eye.
"We cannot afford not to raise uneasy questions about the structural quality of school buildings," the China Daily newspaper said in an editorial.
It said authorities should act with "firm resolve" if investigations indicated that the school collapses were due to "poor-quality construction or the builders' shoddy compliance with building rules."
In Juyuan, few buildings escaped some sort of damage in the quake, but no other major structure simply collapsed in on itself the way the middle school did -- and it was built only 14 years ago.
"Bad materials," said a peasant woman, standing next to the ruin. "Local officials are just so corrupt."
Juyuan residents said the local government used educational funds allocated to them to build the school, and awarded the project to a contractor. Someone along the way decided to cut corners, they said.
"The local officials get money from above, and then they take part of it for themselves," said Liu Gan, a 25-year-old worker, sticking his right hand in his pocket in a telling gesture.
"The whole world knows local officials take money for themselves. Only the central government doesn't," said Liu, who himself attended the school.
Up to 900 children are believed to have been buried in the rubble of the Juyuan Middle School. Four days after the earthquake, only a small number of students had been dragged out.
A faint stench emerging from under the blocks of broken concrete bore testimony to the hundreds still inside -- perhaps victims of China's special brand of dog-eat-dog market economy.
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THE DEBATE
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Vidéo
Images
Map: earthquake in China's Sichuan province
