China’s Red Cross hascalled in national auditors to keep track of goods and money donated to helpthe millions left homeless by the Sichuanearthquake, as public anger mounts over allegations of misdirected aiddonations and deaths caused by shoddy construction.
Around 1,000 parents of children who died when their primary school collapsedmarched in quake-hit Mianyang city at the weekend, holding photographs of theirdead children. They were allowed to march by police and took their complaintsto government officials.
Officials said an investigation team had been set up, including parents of childrenwho died. Officials from another city will manage the team, which willinvestigate what happened in buildings at the Fuxin No.2 Primary School, where 127 children died.
“The working group has been set up with the specific task of investigating theFuxin No. 2 Primary School,” an official in the Mianyang municipal governmentnews department said.
“It includes parent representatives and will conduct itself in a transparentand open manner. The timing of its conclusions will depend on the expertassessments.”
Parents said the school had been built on unstable foundations in the firstplace, echoing Chinese media reports that it was first constructed in 1989, and had been declared to be unsafe as early as 1996.
School ‘built on hole’
“That primary school was built on a big hole. They just filled it up withrocks,” said a woman whose daughter sustained head injuries when the buildingcollapsed in the earthquake.
“It’s dangerous and unstable.”
Commenting on the investigation in the Hong Kongmedia, construction expert Zhou Jintian from the Beijing Institute ofTechnology said the school’s brick walls had been unable to withstand thequake.
“The building is made of bricks, and each floor is placed upon a load-bearingwall of bricks,” Zhou said. “Brick walls are unable to withstand the sidewaysforces generated in an earthquake. The building needs to be built with aflexible steel frame.”
Premier Wen Jiabao pledged continuing investigations into allegations of shoddyconstruction at schools across the quake-hit region, where similar complaintsare being leveled at government officials. At least 6,000 schoolchildren and teachers are believed to have died in collapsed school buildings.
“We are already working with the ministry of construction to meet with theirlocal departmental counterparts to determine all that we can with regard to thebuildings that have collapsed,” Premier Wen Jiabao said in an interview withPhoenix TV.
Call for compensation
Nanjing-based scholar Sun Wenguang published an article immediately afterthe quake calling on the government to bring those responsible for shoddyconstruction work to justice.
“Chinahas spent 400 billion yuan on the Olympics, and three billion yuan on an operahouse. Is it possible for the government to allot 100 billion yuan to improvethe construction of school buildings?”
“I think people should demand that the government do something, such ascompensating the parents who lost their children. Why were there so manyvictims in that quake?” Sun said.
“It is because of a lack of funding for education, resulting in substandardconstruction in elementary schools, which left students dead,” he added.
Netizens commenting online and callers to RFA's listener hotlines echoed Sun's view.
"In the quake, school buildings collapsed one after another, and classrooms fell to the ground. But few government office buildings collapsed," a listener from the eastern province of Jiangsu said. "We see on television that the collapsed buildings were not build with reinforced concrete."
"They now say nothing is more precious than human lives. But did the thought cross their minds when they were building those schools? The news reports keep saying that this was a natural disaster and not a manmade disaster. Was it?" he said.
Residents of disaster-hit areas have also voiced complaints that aid appears tobe being diverted away from the millions of earthquake victims left homeless,with scant food and water, after the quake.
“The head of our production brigade might get more, but we just received a boxof instant noodles and two bottles of water,” one resident of Shifang city, Sichuan, said.
Suspicion falls on officials
“Much of the money and relief supplies must have been taken by local cadres,”she said. “The other day when my husband went to the office for something, hehappened to see some delicious food inside. But we cannot get them.”
Surveillance groups are already springing up in rural communities to monitorthe distribution of relief.
Chengdu-based Li Tinghui, one of the organizers of such a group, said it hadbeen formed to prevent graft. “We are monitoring the donated money to preventsome officials from bilking profits from the natural disaster,” she said.
“We will follow up on cases and investigate. For example, if a house hascollapsed, we will investigate how this is reported to claim relief and how therelief money is spent,” she added.
The Red Cross Society of China said it would call in national auditorsfollowing a series of complaints posted on the Internet of misuse of donatedfunds.
One posting alleged that two China Red Cross staff members asked for receiptsworth five times the actual price when buying medicines from a store, while thesociety’s Web site was attacked by a hacker last week, who alleged it wascollecting a five percent “management fee” for donations collected in its name.
Inspections ordered
The society is inviting the National Audit Office to examine its purchase ofaround 6,500 tons of grain and 1.7 million mosquito nets destined for quake-hitareas, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Service director Chen Mingren said the society would draft in experts to setstandards for the procurement of goods, invite government inspectors to checkshipments and publish purchase notices on its Web site, with transparentadvertising of public tenders.
His statement came after Premier Wen Jiabao pointed to a discrepancy betweenthe 16 billion yuan in pledged aid, and the value of the aid actually seen inthe disaster area.
“We must ensure that all funds are used entirely for disaster relief. Thismatter cannot wait until rescue is over to be investigated,” Wen said.
"We haven't just sent down a notice, we've dispatched numerous audit inspectionteams, have begun examining goods; also the details of how the money is beingreleased and used. This is also a very important test for our government atevery level," he said.
Original reporting in Cantonese by Grace Kei Lai-see, and in Mandarin by QiaoLong, Xin Yu, and Yan Xiu. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Mandarinservice director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in Englishby Luisetta Mudie, Chen Ping and Jia Yuan. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.