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Ministry to Start Safety Checks on Boats
In the wake of a string of boating accidents, the Ministry of Communications has decided to conduct a month-long safety check on the rural township passenger and ferry boats.
The check will consist of supervising the implementation of a boat safety management responsibility system at the county and rural township government levels, and standardize the granting of business licences for rural township passenger and ferry boats.
Unlicensed boats, boats without enough crew members and skilled pilots as well as being overloaded with people, goods or domestic animals will be banned from operations. Sailing during foggy conditions will be banned as well.
During an emergency telephone conference on water transportation held in Beijing on Friday, Huang Zhendong, minister of communications, said that in a short period of 10 days plus in May, seven boating accidents took place on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.
The most serious took place in Hejiang County, Southwest China's Sichuan Province on June 22, he said.
A boat carrying 221 passengers sank in heavy fog in Hejiang after striking a reef in the Yangtze. As of yesterday, 90 passengers had been rescued and 121 bodies retrieved.
The cause for the boat's capsizing was the lack of safety management and precautionary measures, the minister said.
The sunken boat was designed to hold a maximum of 101 people. During the flood season, it was supposed to hold only 70 people. The crew should have stopped sailing because of heavy fog on the Yangtze, said Teng Fucai, deputy director of the Safety Office of the Department of Labour in Sichuan.
Because of the dereliction of duty on the part of local departments in charge of communications, the boat passed an annual inspection one day before the accident, said a source with the Hejiang Public Security Bureau.
An investigation team from the Ministry of Supervision is seeking and verifying evidence against those who are responsible for the accident.
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