According to China’s state-run media, 345 tons of inferior quality steel was found at the construction site for an affordable housing project in south China’s Wenchang, Hainan Province. The steel was about to be used for the project and could have compromised the safety of the housing project.
The quality control hotline in Hainan received a phone call on July 25. The caller claimed that large quantities of substandard steel bars were found at the site, which is host to a construction project costing 136 million yuan (US$21 million).
According to Zheng Ting’an, the deputy head of the Hainan Province Quality and Technical Supervision Inspection Corps, inspectors checked sample steel bars on site and found that there were three tons of substandard steel bars, falling short of national standards in both weight and diameter.
“Once the substandard steel bars are used in the construction, it undoubtedly would pose a serious safety risk to the housing.” Zheng Ting’an said.
The problematic 345 tons of substandard steel bars have been confiscated by the Hainan Provincial Quality and Technical Supervision Inspection Corps.
“They knew the product was unqualified,” Liu Bingcheng, who does quality inspections, said. But “they still allowed the substandard product to sell in the market.”
Wenchang City Construction Material Testing Center was the organization responsible for testing this batch of materials. They certified that the steel had reached the national standards, but only conducted tensile and bending tests, without weighing the materials.
Weight deviation tests, however, are supposed to be compulsory.
A female civil engineer in Haikou told The Epoch Times: “Construction quality is a very important matter that has an impact on human lives. These construction teams are solely bent on profit. They have no concern for people’s lives.”
She added: “You know, we often hear that certain residential building or bridge collapsed. They can all be traced to these root problems.”
Read the original Chinese article
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Substandard Steel Threatens Building Safety in Chinese City
Corruption in the building materials industry in China means danger for citizens; in a recent case, low-quality materials were intercepted before being used.
By Jinghui Chen
8/11/2011
Updated: 8/14/2011
