Not abiding by safety rules runs a risk
THE DEATH OF A MAN at Nanjing Railway Station on Sunday shows the heavy price that may be paid by those seeking to cut corners. Beijing Youth Daily comments:
A man jumped off a platform in Nanjing Railway Station, East China’s Jiangsu province, in order to take a “shortcut” to the platform on the other side of the tracks. But he failed to get onto the other platform before a high-speed train pulled in on that line.
Although the driver slammed on the brakes the moment he saw the man crossing the tracks, the train could not stop in time and the man was trapped between the side of the train and the edge of the platform, a gap of 10 centimeters at most.
Many witnesses uploaded videos on the internet showing the man screaming while his upper body struggled painfully above the platform edge. It
On Monday, the government of Lankao county in Central China’s Henan province announced that it is no longer on the country’s list of impoverished counties. It is the second county this year to achieve this after Jiangxi province’s Jinggangshan, which was removed from the list late last month.
A county can be removed from the central government’s list if less than 2 percent of its population is classified as impoverished, having a personal daily income of less than $1.5. took about two hours to dismantle that section of platform and the man died when he was pulled out.
Some argue that the railway stations should build screen doors on the platforms, as is the case in some subway stations. But they ignore the true cause of the tragedy, which is the man’s willful disregard of the rules. He obviously thought he had enough time to cross the tracks and climb up on to the platform on the other side. But he underestimated the speed of the train pulling in.
It is not uncommon for people to break rules that are in place for their safety, but doing so often ends in tragedy. Three years ago, the poverty-stricken population in Lankao was 11.8 percent. It is 1.27 percent now.
Although the central government has vowed to eliminate poverty by 2020, which means there will be no impoverished counties nationwide, the county governments must be practical with their poverty alleviation efforts, since poverty in different places has different causes and thus entails different poverty alleviation measures to target their specific difficulties.
Also, the provincial governments must have a set of objective and professional criteria to evaluate a county government’s performance in poverty alleviation work. The authorities must be prudent in making such conclusions as a county’s “poverty hat is taken off ”. Some of the poverty-stricken population may have more income this year, because of government’s huge input, which disqualifies them as impoverished people. However, they may return to poverty again in the future if the government’s input is not sustained, or if the conditions in education and public services, which prevented them from developing the capacity to pursue better lives previously, have not fundamentally improved.
Poverty hat is taken off