Villagers in remote areas in Tibet will no longer have to cross rivers by zip-lines as the regional government is planning to replace the inclined cables with bridges.

"Zip-lines should be used for tourism and adventure only," Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Tibet regional government, said last Friday.

He ordered the finance, transport and other relevant departments to draw a detailed plan as soon as possible to replace zip-lines with bridges in the next two years.

There are 82 zip-lines in the mountainous areas of Tibet, according to Wang Jian, a poverty relief official in Tibet. Twelve of the zip-lines were made of cowhide and were more dangerous that those made of steel cable.

Propelled by gravity, users glide across a river by a zip-line. Some school children used them every day to go to school, while tourists used zip-lines for entertainment.

Qiangba Puncog said bridges replacing zip-lines need not to be big to accommodate cars. "We can build small bridges for people and livestock to walk on," he said, adding that priority was to replace zip-lines made with cowhide.

Last year, the government built 9,616 kilometers of roads to link up 848 isolated villages.

(Xinhua News Agency December 8, 2008)