Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu called on the country's farmers on Wednesday to build well-designed houses on secure sites in order to prevent casualties and damage in natural disasters, including earthquakes.

 

Addressing a national meeting on earthquake damage prevention in rural residential housing construction, Hui said the collapse of vulnerable rural houses was major factor behind the heavy loss of life and property in natural calamities, such as earthquakes, storms, floods and landslides.

 

Hui said lessons should be learned from the past by improving the quake-resistant capability of rural houses and setting up a mechanism to provide technological services for the rural areas.

 

Even minor earthquakes had caused major disasters in rural China, Hui acknowledged.

 

He blamed uninformed site selection, design and construction techniques, and poor quality materials for the vulnerability to disasters.

 

He said farmers should be advised to build their homes away from areas vulnerable to natural disasters, such as storms, floods, landslides, mud and rock flows and heavy rain.

 

The government had launched safe rural housing demonstration projects in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and 10 other provincial areas since 2004, he said.

 

(Xinhua News Agency June 22, 2006)