Student toll still under calculation ten months after earthquake

Source: Xinhua | 03-08-2009 18:30

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- The number of students killed in the devastating May 12 earthquake in southwestern China last year is still under calculation, an official said.

"We will publicize the result after we finish the calculation,"said Wei Hong, deputy governor of Sichuan, who is attending the annual session of the Chinese legislature.

The student toll is a question relating to the number of people killed in the quake, Wei said, adding that the calculation must be carried out according to relevant regulations enacted by relevant ministries and government departments.

"Therefore it is a very complicated process. We are still investigating into and checking the number of the dead and missing. It is not easy for us to tell how many students were exactly killed in the earthquake before the accurate number of al lthe victims is confirmed," he said at a press conference.

Earlier reports said that thousands of students had been killed in the magnitude 8.0 quake and officials were believed to bear some responsibility in relation to shoddy construction of school buildings.

After the earthquake, the government had pledged greater efforts to investigate why many schools crumbled while nearby buildings stayed erect.

About 87,000 people feared dead in the earthquake.

Wei said that the province will have restored 95 percent of the collapsed school buildings by the end of 2009. Half of the campuses are now under construction in 39 most severely-hit counties.

The province has stepped up the re-building of residential houses for farmers and citizens. "We will ensure everybody to move into new houses by the end of this year," he said.

He added that there have been no outbursts of epidemics nor famine in the quake region. "As no social unrests were reported, we did not take any special security measures," he said.

Editor:Shi Taoyang