Chinese staffs working in Vietnam’s Can Tho bridge safe

CAN THO CITY—Chinese staffs working on the construction of the Can Tho bridge in Vietnam’s southern Mekong Delta are safe because no accident has happened to the works undertaken by the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), a Chinese official said Thursday.
Xu Mingliang, Chinese Consul General in Vietnam’s southern Ho Chi Minh City made the remarks when answering Xinhua reporters on the phone. He said the Consulate General will keep on following the bridge’s incident, and maintaining contacts with the Chinese construction firm.
Wang Guijun, representative of the CSCEC in Vietnam, and Sun Weizhen, director of the project on implementing the No. 3 bidding package, said the project on building the Can Tho bridge over the Hau River linking Can Tho city with Vinh Long province is divided into three independent bidding packages undertaken by different contractors. The CSCEC is mainly in charge of building approach roads and ramps in Can Tho city.
After a section of an approach ramp in Vinh Long province leading to the bridge collapsed on Wednesday morning, the CSCEC urgently inspected the safety of its works. The corporation has found no potential unsafety. None of its workers have been injured.
The 90-m section of the ramp under the No.1 bidding package undertaken by a Vietnamese contractor comprising three corporations collapsed, killing 64 people and injuring some 180 others by Thursday afternoon, according to local media.
Construction of the Can Tho bridge, the longest and most modern cable-braced bridge in the delta, began in September 2004 with investment of over 4.8 trillion Vietnamese dong (302 million U.S. dollars) from official development assistance of Japan and the Vietnamese government’s reciprocal capital. It is scheduled to be complete in December 2008.

—The Daily Mail, China Daily news exchange item