'Lax supervision seen again with April 12 road collapse'
- Source: Global Times
- [09:01 April 22 2011]
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By Miranda Shek
The Wanda Plaza road collapse in Baoshan District on April 12 was a reflection of the lax government supervision that still exists when it comes to enforcing construction regulations, despite lessons learned from the Jiaozhou Road fire last year, a senior official said Thursday.
Huang Rong, director of the Shanghai Municipal Urban Construction and Communications Commission, admitted that the road collapse that left a 10-meter-wide ditch along the western end of Yi'erba Jinian Road was "inevitable."
"We have learnt a lesson from the incident: the safety inspection of all construction sites in the city must be done 100-percent thoroughly," Huang told a local radio station Thursday, "The government's supervision authority must find potential risks on site."
Huang added that urban construction authorities will work on better enforcing 22 articles of a new regulation that was released in January, in a bid to minimize construction risks following the Jiaozhou Road fire last year, which claimed the lives of 58 people.
He also said that authorities will release details of the investigation into the collapsed road when it concludes.
Construction work at the site of the accident, for which no injuries were reported, has since remained temporarily suspended.