Lan-Yu Railway 90% Halted
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Lack of funds lead to the halt of 90% of Lanzhou-Chongqing
railway, causing pay-petitions by thousands of workers.
Recently, a serious accident happened in Lintao, Gansu,
where a truck rolled over and killed 24 workers.
Experts point out that the authorities' Great Leap Forward
in high-speed rails is now pressing the brakes and people are bearing the consequences.
On October 29, at the Lanzhou-Chongqing railway site,
Gansu Province, occurred an accident.
A truck breached traffic regulation for carrying passengers
in the inclined tunnel of Heishan.
Due to brake failure, the truck lost control and overturned,
causing the death of 24 people, with 4 other being injured.
The total investment of Lan-Yu Railway is RMB 74.4 billion.
It goes across three provinces, Gansu, Sichuan and Chongqing.
It is the regional integrated transport hub,
connecting the southwest with the northwest.
The project was started in September 2008,
and was expected to be in operation in 2014.
However, due to funding shortages, at present 90%
of the Lanzhou-Chongqing railway projects are halted.
In this project about RMB 300 million are owed to workers.
Tens of thousand of workers conducted petition for their pay.
The 8th Bureau of China Railway headquarters and other
related institutions have been surrounded by the workers.
As the situation got serious, the local government was forced
to urgently inject RMB 300 million to pay workers' wages.
Then the workers' payment petition subsided.
Guo Zhanrui (Spokesman, China Labour Bulletin, Hong Kong):
This case has two parts, one is the issue of workers' safety.
The other is the problem with the payments' talks.
Both are very important for the migrant workers.
The central government often says that relevant
departments are especially concerned about the issue.
However, almost every week
we see this kind of news again.
Wang Mengshu, scholar from Chinese Engineering Academy
and deputy chief engineer of China Railway Tunnel Group,
said to mainland China media that after the Wenzhou accident,
the security of high-speed rail in mainland China was questioned.
It is difficult for the Ministry of Railways to finance.
At present, over 90% of the projects under construction are suspended.
The total length of the suspended rail is over 10,000 km.
About 6 million migrant workers were employed there.
Many of the workers were not paid for nearly half a year.
Since July China Railway Group had over 2000 petitions.
Liu Huantao, the deputy head of Lan-Yu Railway project,
sees the domino effect' fate of this project.
Once the work suspension starts, it will go upstream
and downstream and it will be finished.
Lu Tao, a Chinese railway engineer, said that funding shortage
makes the construction companies unable to pay wages.
Plus, the upstream suppliers are unable to get loans,
which will cause a chain debt.
Lu Tao: All relevant businesses, especially those
dominating the railway constructions, may soon be paralyzed.
This is what he means by the domino effect,
which will affect the respective businesses in the society.
Lu Tao said, the Railways Ministry' funding crisis is a bad
consequence of the so-called 4 trillion investment plan launched by the authorities a few years ago.
To stimulate the economy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
launched many projects then, causing huge financial bubble.
Lu Tao: Now it goes toward economic hard landing,
and funds are in the tightening phase.
Compared with then, it's just the opposite.
Suddenly a lot of uncompleted projects are being exposed.
The reason is, they don't care about benefits for the economy,
but are just interest-driven by power and money trading.
In fact, this phenomenon is not just in the Railways Ministry,
due to the train accidents, but in all other sectors too.
Mainland' media reported the Railways Ministry total liability
to be over RMB 2 trillion, with RMB 130 billion owed to two major construction companies.
To make up for the money shortage, the Railways Ministry
raised funds of RMB 160 billion in the bond market this year.
Lu Tao believes that every time CCP has financial problems
due to its policy failures, it makes people pay the losses.
It forces people to bear the consequences by means of
inflation, stocks, bonds, etc, thus usurping people's hard-earned money.
NTD reporters Zhu Zhishan, Li Qian and Li Ruilin
《神韵》2011世界巡演新亮点