Anger over schools' collapseChinese government officials, meanwhile, struggled to answer questions from angry citizens on why so many schools collapsed in Monday's earthquake. They vowed to punish anyone responsible for shoddy construction.
APA rescuer arranges school bags found in the debris of a collapsed school for parents to claim on Thursday, in Shifang, Sichuan province, China.In a rare online exchange with ordinary Chinese, the first measure of the number of destroyed schoolrooms — 6,898 — emerged, with figures still to come from the hardest-hit areas.
"If quality problems do exist in the school buildings, we will punish those responsible severely and give the public a satisfactory answer," Han Jin, head of the Ministry of Education's development and planning department, said on a state-run forum.
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