China’s Ministry of Railways has halted 90 percent of projects due to lack of funds, leaving many railway stations, bridges, and tunnels in construction sites across China unfinished, and wages owed to tens of thousands of migrant workers.
The Railways Ministry has halted projects affecting about 10,000 kilometers (6,213 miles) of railway tracks, Wang Mengshu, a scholar at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and deputy chief engineer of the China Railway Tunnel Group, told Chinese media.
When the Railways Ministry couldn’t meet payments on the more than 130 billion yuan (US$20.46 billion) owed to two major railway construction giants, China Railway Construction Corporation Limited and China Railways Group Limited, most projects were halted, Wang told Yangcheng Evening News on Oct. 27.
Wang also said that many migrant workers have not been paid for six months, and in China Railways Group Limited alone, over 2,000 migrant workers were demanding or protesting their unpaid wages.
Additionally, tens of thousands of people working on the Langyu Railway, a major track from Langzhou in Gansu to Chongqing, were owed wages totaling 300 million yuan (US$47.19 million), and were protesting to demand unpaid wages, according to The Economic Observer.
The scale of this work disruption is unprecedented in China’s railway history, a high-level official from a large state-owned engineering company told The Economic Observer. Once a project stops, it triggers a domino effect; many parties, including migrant workers, construction companies, and the equipment and materials suppliers are all affected, he said.
A supervisor at one construction site told First Financial Daily that he has been working in the railway industry for 23 years and has never seen anything this serious before.
