16 blamed for series of bus shelter cave-ins
Sixteen people, including designers and government officials, have been found responsible for the collapse of 16 bus shelters, one of which proved fatal, after heavy snowfall in Hefei, capital of Anhui province.
One person was killed and 27 others injured when the shelters caved in during the two days following a blizzard that battered the city on Jan 3.
An investigative team, comprised of local officials as well as 11 experts from Tsinghua University and Southeast University, concluded that the incidents were a result of weak aluminum pillars and shoddy design.
Four people involved in the construction of the shelters have been arrested and are now in the hands of prosecutors, the city government said on Sunday. They include the boss of Anhui Chuangyu Construction Engineering as well as a construction inspection engineer and a design engineer with other firms.
Meanwhile, seven officials with the Hefei key project construction administration bureau and five employees at the government-owned Hefei Bus Group have been demoted and had demerits added to their personnel files.
The stations were all on Wangjiang Road and had been in use for only about a year before they collapsed. They were island-type structures built in the middle of the road, a design believed to be more efficient for public transport.
The original bidding information shows the project, which included construction of 30 bus shelters, was estimated to cost 15 million yuan ($2.38 million), although the contract was eventually awarded in May 2016 to Anhui Chuangyu after the company bid just 7.1 million yuan.
million yuan
Five months later, the Hefei key project bureau criticized the company, saying it “had been sluggish and the progress of construction had been slower than contracted”.
Anhui Chuangyu has been ordered to suspend its business for a year and is now banned from bidding for public projects, the city government said on Sunday.
The statement also urged higher authorities to downgrade the ranking of the Anhui Institute of Building Research and Design — which designed the collapsed shelters — to limit the kind of projects it can bid for.