CHINA> Regional
Govt center in the air weighs on rebuilding
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-22 17:39

Before the quake struck, most of the departments under the CPC Chengdu municipal committee and government had already moved to the new center.

Only the offices of the city's top leaders, including the party secretary, mayor, people's congress and political consultative conference, had yet to move in.

But the quake paved the way for the city's decision to sell the administrative complex.

While the move won the support of residents and administrative employees, controversy soon built up around the actual sale of the complex.

Jie Liang, an official with the city's sports bureau, told China Daily that she would feel more at ease in her old office located in the Chengdu Sports Stadium downtown, considering how quake victims continued to suffer in Sichuan.

Her office had moved to the center less than a week before the temblor struck.

Following the disaster, Jie had gone to several quake zones to help in relief work and came face to face with the suffering of victims.

In Dujiangyan, where 900 students were killed in a school building collapse, Jie found a distraught middle-aged mother facing the body of her daughter.

"And when I went to quake-hit Mianzhu about 10 days ago, I did not expect to see about half of the city's population of 500,000 still living in tents. It felt wrong to be staying in a grand edifice like the center while millions of people are homeless," she said.

Also, the new complex is too far from the city center, Jie said.

"Many have complained about its inaccessibility," she said.

"The former offices of all the departments are near Tianfu Square, the city center."