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- Authorities have blamed trainees from a Chinese construction company for the tunnel collapse.
- The trainee, Wang Nianpu, will be held criminally responsible as the “main person in charge,” and his superiors will be fined.
- Investigators said Wang was supposed to issue a crucial stop-work order but failed to do so.
Chinese authorities have named a construction site trainee on criminal charges over a pipe collapse that killed three construction workers.
Wang Nianpu, a trainee working as a quality inspector, was one of three people named in an investigation report as responsible for a collapse along a main road in central Jinan in December.
The report, seen by Business Insider, was filed in early May but became a hot topic after local media reported on the incident over the weekend.
The report said the workers were killed when the tunnel collapsed due to a missing steel support – an excavator was digging up earth at the entrance, causing a steel plate in the trench to fall, crushing the three.
As a result, dozens of local government officials, Wang’s senior colleagues and superiors have been fined, warned or formally reprimanded.
Only three people were named as targets of the criminal investigation: Wang, the engineer and the site supervisor.
The report singled out Wang, saying he “bears primary responsibility for the accident,” and that he had previously been detained but had been released on bail pending trial.
But it wasn’t his role as a quality inspector that got him into trouble.
According to an investigation conducted by the Jinan Municipal Emergency Management Bureau, Wang’s superiors discovered safety hazards in the tunnel on Dec. 28 and signed a stop-work order the next day.
The report said Wang had been instructed to hand over the order to construction workers on December 29 but failed to do so for “personal reasons.”
Authorities announced the following day that the tunnel had collapsed.
The report said work carried out in the trench violated regulations and recommended a $151,000 fine for the Qingdao branch of China Power Construction Co., which oversaw the site.
It is unclear who Wang’s direct employer is. PowerChina Construction is a state-owned company that worked on the project with several subcontractors, including Chengda Lighting Engineering and Hengxin Construction Supervision.
Wang’s case trended on Weibo, China’s version of X, on Tuesday and was the top search topic on the platform for several hours, according to data seen by BI.
“This is shocking, are these accidents being blamed on people who earn the minimum wage?” one Weibo user wrote. “They can’t even sit at a dinner table, and yet they’re trying to put the main responsibility on them?”
“It’s no longer a joke that interns have to take on significant responsibility. It’s a fact,” another wrote.
“Intern status should not be a prerequisite for exemption from criminal penalties,” local media Red Star News reported, citing labor experts from law firms in Beijing and Hunan province.
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