Weak buildings threaten life

On April 4, a building collapsed in Fenghua, Zhejiang province. Five days later, the deputy chief of construction of the street where the building once stood is said to have committed suicide.

Did the local official (He Gaobo) commit suicide because he was forced to take the blame for accident? It is not known. But if indeed that is the case then He should be seen as a victim of injustice, because grassroots-level officials should not be made scapegoats for such accidents.

The Fenghua building collapse could be the beginning of a wave of such accidents as the "fast food" buildings built in the 1980s and 1990s enter their 30s and 20s. So there is no justification in blaming grassroots officials who have neither the power nor financial resources at their command for such accidents.

On the contrary, it's high time higher-level officials looked at the real cause of such accidents and took measures to protect people's lives and properties. To begin with, quality supervision officials should establish an accountability system and regularly inspect residential buildings to identify and eliminate risks before accidents happen.

Over the past few years, the public and the media have focused attention on rising housing prices, overlooking the importance of safety that comes with the use of quality construction materials. According to the Property Law, a person enjoys property right over real estate for 70 years, but many of the residential buildings seem to have a lifespan of only 50 years, after which they would become too dangerous to live in or would be pulled down. Some experts even say that some of the buildings are good enough to last only 25 years.

This should remind authorities to take measures to ensure that property developers use only quality materials in construction. This has become all the more important because similar accidents have been reported from Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, and Shanghai earlier.

Many people say that property developers use substandard construction materials to maximize profits, and experts fear this trend will enter a high risk period in the coming two decades.

Therefore, ensuring the use of quality construction materials is key to protecting people's property rights, especially because a house is the costliest asset that a majority of the families purchase.

With urbanization gaining a feverish pace in China, quality control and safety factors have become more important than ever. Zhou Lei, a specialist with the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, once said that quite a few property developers are using poor construction materials and cheating homebuyers in other ways. For example, some developers deviate from the standard requirement for reinforcement covers in a major way.