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Shanghai denies cover-up as pig tally tops 10,000

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The number of dead pigs pulled out of the Huangpu River in Shanghai crossed 10,000 since the city government started fishing out the carcasses about two weeks ago.

Shanghai denies cover-up as pig tally tops 10,000.[File photo]

As of 3pm yesterday, the number of dead pigs hauled from the waters was 10,164 after another 369 carcasses were plucked from the river.

All the carcasses were sent to an incineration center in the city's Fengxian District.

Yesterday's haul was slightly higher after four consecutive days of decline.

The city government's spokesman Xu Wei said the greenery and public sanity bureau has set up a communication channel with related departments in Jiaxing to report daily updates in the two cities.

Xu said the bureau will remove the pig carcasses in the main stream of the Huangpu River first and then move to clear those floating in the tributaries of the river.

It will also carry out a dragnet search to remove dead pigs that might be stuck or hidden in the harbors, shallows and grooves.

Water safety remained the main worry for the locals.

The government has asked residents not to panic, saying that all the tests showed the tap water from the nine water plants in the affected areas met the national standards.

No cover-up

The Shanghai government has also denied claims of a cover-up as alleged in a newspaper report.

The People's Daily reported the Shanghai government was slow in reacting to the crisis.

"There is still much room for the Shanghai government to improve its way of releasing information," the paper said.

But the paper also quoted Xu as saying that "Shanghai has never tried to cover up any information in the dead pig dumping scandal, but follows the principle of working transparently to the public."

The city government has been updating the situation regularly on its official microblog since March 11, three days after a netizen posted pictures of the dead pigs that drew the attention of local residents and authorities in Songjiang.

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