Finger-pointing as toll climbs

2008-05-14 14:08

Juyuan, China - As more children were pulled on Wednesday from the rubble of their schools, questions emerged over whether corruption and shoddy construction were to blame for taking such a heavy toll of young lives.

Across Sichuan province and neighbouring regions tens of thousands of people have been killed or buried in the rubble of collapsed buildings following Monday's 7.9-magnitude quake.

A particularly horrifying reality has been the number of schools that were destroyed.

In one of the worst cases, hundreds of students were feared buried in the debris of the Juyuan Middle School - where more than 50 bodies have already been pulled out.

Grief gave way to finger-pointing as it was noted that other buildings nearby had withstood the quake.

"I'll tell you why the school collapsed," said an elderly man standing outside Juyuan Middle School. "It was shoddily built. Someone wanted to save money."

The man gave voice to the widespread suspicion throughout China that the greed of builders and government officials had put children at risk.

"We cannot afford not to raise uneasy questions about the structural quality of school buildings," the China Daily newspaper said in an editorial.

Authorities should act with firm resolve

It said authorities should act with "firm resolve" if investigations indicate that the school collapses were due to "poor-quality construction or the builders' shoddy compliance with building rules".

Teenager Yang Juan was one of the lucky few in Juyuan, escaping from a third-floor classroom by just a few seconds when the walls began shaking violently.

Moments later a large portion of the five-storey school building collapsed in on itself, crushing children inside under tons of concrete and metal.

"I couldn't believe it was really happening. I felt like I was in a dream," Yang, 15, told AFP while holding an umbrella under pouring rain in front of the school's ruins.

At a newly built primary school that collapsed in Dujiangyan, just a flew kilometres from the Juyuan Middle School, 100 students and teachers were pulled out of the rubble but more than 100 remained buried on Wednesday.

At the main building of Beichuan Middle School in Mianyang city a little further to the north in Sichuan province, at least 1 000 students and teachers were dead and missing, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.

Meanwhile, perhaps more than 200 children were buried when two schools affiliated with a steam turbine factory in Sichuan's Hanwang township were destroyed by the quake, according to Xinhua.

In Chongqing municipality, hundreds of kilometres from the epicentre, two school buildings also imploded, killing five primary school children and injuring over 100, Xinhua said.

In Juyuan, members of the paramilitary People's Armed Police formed a ring around the rubble as rescue workers extracted victims - all apparently dead.

- AFP