BEIJING: China’s rail minister, facing public outrage over Saturday’s deadly train crash, has ordered a two-month safety review of railway operations and apologised for the accident which killed 39 people, state media reported on Tuesday.
Internet users have flooded websites and microblogs with angry comments following the crash in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, the country’s deadliest rail accident since 2008.
Even before the investigation into the cause of the crash was complete, Beijing sacked three middle-level railway officials on Sunday, hoping to assuage public fury.
Efforts by the propaganda department to bar Chinese media from questioning official accounts of the accident only fuelled the anger and suspicion.
Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily quoted Railways Minister Sheng Guangzu as saying a range of railway officials would be directed to work on front-line operations during the next two months and to learn from the accident.
He said the safety campaign will extend through the end of September and will focus on high-speed rail and passenger trains, such as implementing maintenance standards and reinforcing checks on power connections to pre-empt outages. (Reuters)