An investigation found a construction company used shoddy materials to build a rail line in north China’s Shanxi Province, failing design requirements, the China Railway Corporation (CRC) said Friday.
The confirmation from the country’s railway operator came more than a month after the Economic Information Newspaper under Xinhua News Agency revealed a quality scandal in the construction of the 164-km Taiyuan-Xingxian railway linking the central and northern parts of Shanxi.
Investigation and testing showed the construction company did not use the appropriate packing material required to build part of the rail line’s transition sections linking bridges and tunnels, thus failing design requirements, the CRC said in a short statement, without naming the construction company.
The investigation has found “no obvious quality defects” in the main architecture of the tunnels and they have met design requirements, it said.
Those responsible for the quality problem have been held accountable, the vaguely worded statement said, saying the CRC has “seriously treated” the project’s quality problem.
The construction unit was ordered to rebuild the problematic sections, and the construction and supervising units have been forbidden from bidding on future railway construction projects, it said, without giving further details.
With an investment of 8.7 billion yuan (1.41 billion U.S. dollars), the rail line linking the provincial capital city of Taiyuan with Xingxian County started construction in March 2010 and is scheduled to begin operations by the end of this year.
China Railway 12th Bureau Group Co., Ltd., affiliated with CRCC Limited, was one of the companies responsible for the rail line’s construction, according to previous media reports.
