Rural buildings need safety law

The "banquet hall" floor of a restaurant in a village in Xiangfen county, Shanxi province, collapsed when villagers were celebrating the 80th birthday of a fellow villager on Aug 29, killing 29 people and injuring 28, seven of them seriously. The top security regulator has ordered a probe into the incident, and the local government has formed a special team for the job and detained some suspects on criminal charges.

In an interview with the media after the devastating earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan province, in 2008, I had said the main reason so many village houses collapse causing heavy casualties when a natural disaster strikes lies in the Construction Law, because it does not include the construction of houses by villagers. This is to say that a villager doesn't need to follow the standards stipulated in the Construction Law－from seeking permission and building license and supervision, to safety and quality management－when building a house.

In many cases, rural houses are designed and constructed by villagers themselves. They do not hire professional construction workers for the job, nor do they get the construction materials checked for quality, which could endanger their safety. Worse, to widen the usable area, some villagers build illegal buildings on the plot approved for house construction, further jeopardizing their safety.

The collapse of the restaurant's "banquet hall" in Xiangfen is a tragic example of why buildings constructed illegally with substandard materials collapse.

To solve the housing quality problems in rural areas, the authorities need to take certain measures.

First, the local construction authority should provide building blueprints free of charge for the villagers to help them build strong and safe houses.

Second, the government should send skilled and experienced workers, again for free, to help the villagers build their houses. And if village houses are found to have hidden safety hazards or villagers have used poor construction materials to build them, villagers or the government-hired workers should be urged to take immediate corrective measures to ensure the safety of the villagers.

Third, the government should provide free quality checks for rural houses. As for commercial buildings in rural areas, the authorities should organize regular fire control and power safety inspections, in order to prevent potential accidents that could cause heavy loss of life and property.

The tragedy in Xiangfen shows that if village buildings, including those used for commercial operations, are not effectively managed a major accident could happen.

Perhaps it's time the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, considered amending the Construction Law and made it a legal obligation for local governments to provide free construction services for villagers.

Regrettably, even more than 12 years after the Wenchuan earthquake, my suggestions have not drawn the attention of the authorities. A lot of buildings are constructed illegally in rurban areas of some prefecture-level cities in Central China, which local urban management officials turn a blind eye to. But whenever higher authorities launch inspections, the same local officials go on overdrive to demolish those illegal buildings, causing huge losses to the residents.

In order to avoid such losses, some residents even try to turn their illegal buildings into legal ones using "back-door" means. This shows that if we don't pay attention to rural housing construction and correct the construction defects in illegal buildings in a timely manner, it would be difficult to implement the urban and rural planning law, which could lead to tragedies.

Therefore, the top legislature should formulate laws and regulations for construction of residential buildings in rural areas, making it mandatory for local governments to provide free services, including planning and building blueprints when rural residents build residential buildings, while checking the quality of the building materials and supervising the construction. And after the construction is completed, the housing construction department should conduct quality examination and, if any hidden safety dangers are found, it should take immediate measures to correct them.

As for impoverished villagers, the government should provide necessary housing reinforcement facilities to ensure their houses don't have any potential safety hazards. Besides, if rural residents use their houses for commercial purposes, fire and power safety departments should carry out regular inspections to eliminate all hidden dangers to prevent accidents.

Attaching importance to the safety and quality of rural houses is not only an integral part of China's urban-rural integrated development plan, but also an important part of building a new socialist countryside. So the top legislature should amend the Construction Law to establish a set of legal norms to address the problems that plague rural housing construction.

The author is a professor at the Law School of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.