Public anger over 7,000 destroyed classrooms

ANGRY Chinese yesterday demanded to know why so many schools collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake.

In a rare conversation with ordinary people on a government-run website, it emerged that nearly 7,000 classrooms were destroyed in the disaster.

Officials struggled to answer questions about why the figure was so high and promised to punish anyone responsible for shoddy construction. Education officials in provinces across China also started making promises to tear down and rebuild schools if they were not quake-safe to avoid another disaster.

“If quality problems do exist in the school buildings, we will punish those responsible severely and give the public a satisfactory answer,” said Han Jin, head of the ministry of education’s planning department. Local officials have been ordered to investigate why so many school buildings collapsed, said a spokesman for the ministry of housing.

Monday’s 7.9 magnitude earthquake far exceeded the state building requirements of earthquake resistance, he added.

But the officials’ measured answers in the online question-and-answer session were met with the kind of angry comments that have echoed across the internet since the quake left whole villages destroyed. “China’s Government buildings at every level are more magnificent than those of developed countries, the schoolrooms are worse than Africa’s, who’s to blame!!!” said one comment. “Exactly what kind of anti-earthquake building standards are there for schools?” another person asked.

The earthquake’s impact on schools has spotlighted China’s chronically underfunded education system and also has been especially painful in a country that restricts many of its citizens to a single child. In one striking case, a high school in Juyuan just north of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu collapsed in seconds, killing all but a handful of the 900 students. Neighbouring buildings appeared little affected.

In Mianzhu, close to where President Hu Jintao arrived to inspect rescue efforts yesterday, seven schools collapsed, burying 1,700 people, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said. Another 700 students were thought to have been buried in a school in nearby Hanwang town, while in Beichuan, 700 were still buried in another school, it reported.

Housing Minister Jiang Weixin said the government would do everything in its power to improve construction standards, but suggested unlawful corner cutting was to blame. “Substandard projects are never allowed,” he said.

Officials in at least six provinces promised to tear down dangerous school buildings to protect students, according to state media reports.