New homes rise for China quake survivors, quality of collapsed houses under probe
19/8/2008 17:45
Earthquake survivors have seen their new permanent residences being built
in southwestern Sichuan Province, 100 days after the May 12 disaster, but it's
still unclear whether the many buildings that collapsed met quality
standards.
"The construction of permanent residences for quake survivors
first started in the rural areas," said Huang Yanrong, Sichuan Province vice
governor, at a press conference in Beijing today.
As of Aug. 12, about
175,000 rural permanent residences were under construction and 20,000 had been
finished.
Under a provincial government policy issued in June, rural families
who lost homes will build permanent new houses themselves under government
supervision. Each will receive 20,000 yuan (2,900 US dollars) from the
government.
The administration worked out guidelines for quake-resistant
designs and provided more than 200 farm house designs, Huang said. "We also
supervised the construction projects to make sure they meet quake resistant
standards."
Building hasn't started in the cities yet. "We are working on a
subsidy policy for urban survivors," she said.
The province has classified
urban homeless families into five categories according to their financial
status, although it hasn't specified how those categories are determined.
The
administration will build low-rent apartments for low-income households and
affordable housing units to be sold to families classified as lower-medium
income, Yang Hongbo, the provincial construction department director, told the
same press conference.
Families with medium, medium-high and high incomes
will have to find new residences by themselves, he said. "But all families that
lost their residences in the earthquake will receive subsidies from the
government."
According to the provincial government website, a low-wage urban
family is one whose average disposable annual income per capita was 3,231 yuan
in 2005. The amount for a high-income family was 18,088 yuan.
The province
was estimated to need 37 million tons of steel and 370 million tons of cement
for quake rebuilding in the next three years, Yang said.
The administration
is also repairing school buildings damaged in the quake and building temporary
classrooms for the new semester, to start on Sept. 1.
Asked whether any
collapsed public buildings were found to have been of poor quality and whether
any penalty had been imposed on contractors, Yang said the provincial government
is still examining the quality of damaged and collapsed buildings.
The
8.0-magnitude quake affected Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces, with Sichuan
the worst hit. The death toll has exceeded 69,000.
The provincial government
announced on Aug. 12 that all displaced people had moved into temporary
housing.
Xinhua
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