‘Greed and Graft Killed Our Children’
Peter Harmsen reports in the Age:
Locals have a simple answer for why the four-storey Juyuan Middle School collapsed during the China quake, killing hundreds of children, while nearby buildings stayed standing: greed.
“Look at the building materials they used,” said one resident in this rural community in south-west 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 fact that so many children were among the more than 50,000 people thought killed in the disaster.
Nearly 7000 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 nap.
POSTED COMMENTS: One Response
I am sure many of us would agree that a proper investigation should be done into this disaster quake, why so many people, esp students died. China’s govt. has habit of disgracefully covering up all their mistakes and blame on others, but this time, people won’t let it cover up again, its 21st century, people’s power. Following lines are from the Time magazine about the quake victims::
“It was built out of tofu,” says Hu Yuefu, 44, of the school building that collapsed in the magnitude 7.9 quake and killed his 15-year-old daughter Huishan. He believes local government officials and the building contractors are responsible. As he speaks, a crowd gathers around to listen and offer their support. “I hope there is an investigation,” Hu says. “Otherwise, there are a thousand parents who would beat them to death.”
“The government and the construction companies collude with each other,” says Hu, whose daughter’s corpse was pulled out from the Juyuan Middle School two hours after it collapsed on Monday. “It’s in their interest to build them poorly.”
“After the disaster is over, there should be an investigation of who built the schools, the material problems and whether there was a problem of corruption. I think there definitely was,” wrote one person on a Tianya web forum.
“How could a place with so many people inside not be built better? That’s what I want to know. We should not forget a lesson that has been learned in blood.”
Source: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1807137,00.html