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Millions Spent on Jerry-built Project
About 300 teachers and students were forced to have classes in local farmers' houses for their only two-year-old teaching buildings built in the village at a cost of RMB$1.3m have already been on precarious crossbeams and cracked walls.
This is just a scene seen in Magou Villege, Chengguan Township, Xin'an County of Henan Province, a new settlement built for villagers from the Yellow River's Xiaolangdi Reservoir area in 1997. For a removal of people from the reservoir area a government fund had early been granted by way of compensation and reconstruction in building the two teaching buildings.
The two buildings had once stood as two most imposing structures in the village. But they soon gave way to wall cracks and split crossbeams and became increasingly dangerous by 1999. Between the first and second floors a brick pillar was added to support the already unsafe structure and a large slip of wood was seen sandwiched in a concrete mixture as one of crossbeams in the buildings.
The teaching buildings had been contracted through the former village committee to Wang Shilao, former Party branch secretary of its neighbor Wangzhuang Village. The contract turned out to be a hand-written agreement of no legal validity, bearing only the amount of floorspace to be built and construction costs needed.
By PD Online staff Li Heng
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