Earthquake: China to Probe School Construction Due to High Children Death Rate

We raised the issue of shoddy construction of buildings within China and government complictity in the posting below:
Eyewitness to China’s Earthquake - Spotlight on Shoddy Construction (and Government)
By John Carey and Les Lothringer (inside China)


We thought, due to the high number of people interested in this controversial issue, we'd publish the information below as soon as we could:

China has announced that it will probe school construction and construction standards.  The probe is being forced by an unusually high number of children deaths in Monday's earthquake and many pictures of ruined schools amid still standing other structures.

The information is coming to us from bloggers within China and from South Australia's newspaper The Advertiser and Sunday Mail.

China's Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has ordered local authorities to initiate an investigation.

But it is hard to envision an investigation starting soon.  There is still digging ongoing and then there will be burials and grieving....

Parents and bloggers are hectoring the government with accusations on this issue, according to one of our sources inside China.

State TV in China is now filled with scenes of downed schools and hundreds of dead children, we are told from China.  Weeping parents are asking why so many children had to die and offering their conclusion that the schools were poorly built and that the government knew.

The launch of the investigation was confirmed by China's official state media on Friday evening May 16, 2008.

Save the Children (China), though fearful of angering the Chinese government yet needing to rally support, issued a press release describing some troubling facts of the school situation in the earthquake area.

Zhang Hong, Director of Support Services for Save the Children in China says: “Children suffered hugely from the impact of this quake ."

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Above: School in ruins in Juyuan where 900 children died.

"Look at the building materials they used," said one resident of Juyuan, where 900 children died when the four story middle school collapsed.

According to AFP, 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 said on Friday that an investigation had been launched.

Responding to the intese public criticism, Minister Jiang said, "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."

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