By Hao Zhou (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-05-16 15:10

China pledged on Friday to investigate any possible wrongdoings involved in the contruction of school buildings, many of which collapsed during Monday's earthquake, killing hundreds of children.

"With the pain still fresh on our hearts, we will fully and seriously investigate this issue after rescue efforts are over. They are the top priority now," said Han Jin, director of the Ministry of Education’s development and planning department during an online communication with Chinese netizens Friday morning.

An aerial view of Yingxiu, Wenchuan county, May 14, 2008, shows the township has been flattened. [Xinhua]

"The fact is that anti-quake standards for construction design were raised after the tragic earthquake in Tangshan in 1976," said Yang Rong from the standards department of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. However, "this earthquake was far beyond the design capacity of houses in the most directly impacted region," Yang added.

It was reported earlier that some collapsed school buildings were built higher than the maximum five floors for middle schools, and some roofs were made of precast slabs rather than concrete cement. Yang said experts have already been sent to devastated areas to examine and appraise those damaged houses and school buildings.

Once quality problems are discovered in the following investigations, related individuals and groups will face severe punishment, declared Han.

Initial statistics showed out of the 216,000 rooms toppled in Sichuan Province in the 7.8 magnitude earthquake, 6,898 of them were school rooms, according to Han.

The killer quake has claimed more than 20,000 lives around the country, most of them in Sichuan Province. Officials said the final toll could more than double to 50,000, as over 25,000 people are still buried under the rubble.