The Ministry of Railways yesterday responded to criticism from
Guo Xiling, a member of the Guangzhou committee of the Chinese
People's Political Consultative Conference, over the improper
handling of railways during the snow disaster that hit southern
China last month.
Wang Yongping, a spokesman for the ministry, said in an
interview on the website of the People's Daily that "all
of Guo's accusations are groundless".
Guo had said two government agencies should be blamed for the
chaos at Guangzhou railway stations, the city's New
Express reported on Monday.
"One is the weather forecasting authority, which failed to
forecast the severe weather situation completely. But the Ministry
of Railways had made a bigger mistake," Guo said on Sunday during a
discussion.
He said the ministry had continued to sell train tickets even
when power supply to Hengyang and Zhuzhou, two railway hubs in
Hunan province, had stopped.
Later, the ministry tried to use diesel trains to replace the
electric ones, Guo had said. The ministry resorted to inefficiently
getting diesel locomotives from as far as the Xinjiang Uygur
autonomous region in the northwest, he said.
In response, Wang said yesterday that all the 557 diesel
locomotives dispatched were from the Guangdong area, and the
neighboring Nanning and Wuhan railway bureaus.
Guo also said on Sunday that when migrant workers had given up
hope of returning home after failing to get on trains disrupted by
the snow, the Ministry of Railways announced transportation would
resume soon - leading to the workers rushing to the railway
stations but ending up trapped in the freezing square.
Wang denied this by saying all tickets for trains leaving
Guangzhou on the damaged Beijing-Guangzhou railway before Feb 3 had
been sold out before the disaster hit the area around Jan 25. The
ministry had not kept selling tickets irresponsibly, he added.
Liu Jingjun, a deputy of the Guangzhou People's Congress and a
chief of Guangzhou traffic police, echoed Guo's point.
"The railway authorities claimed on Jan 26 that the tickets were
sold out. We all agree that no ticket could be available under the
circumstances. But we learned that they sold nearly 170,00 tickets
on Feb 1, 140,000 tickets on Feb 2 and more than 40,000 on Feb 3,"
Liu said.
He suggested the local governments start working on an emergency
plan to cope with similar problems.
(China Daily February 20, 2008)