Officials move to quell cover-up rumors in stampede tragedy
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Officials in central China Thursday denied rumors that the actual death toll from Monday's school stampede was higher than the official figure of eight children killed.
"We have carefully verified the figures," Zhou Haiqiu, the publicity chief of Xiangxiang city committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in Hunan Province, told Xinhua Thursday.
"The whole city was grieved by the tragedy. No one would callously conceal the deaths. No one would be able to, actually, as all the students are natives of Xiangxiang and people would certainly find out if any death went unreported."
The city's health bureau said seven boys and a girl, aged from 11 to 14 died from suffocation at the privately-run Yucai Middle School.
Some parents, however, had doubted the official figure. An unnamed relative of dead student Gong Jian told reporters eight children died at the scene, but he heard one more student had died in hospital early Tuesday.
A spokesman for the city committee said that the families of the eight dead students would get about 350,000 yuan (51,200 U.S. dollars) each in compensation, according to an agreement reached between the parents and the school.
All eight families had signed the compensation agreement by late Wednesday, said the spokesman.
As of Thursday, six of the injured students were allowed to go home and the other 20 of the injured students were still in hospital.
Twelve-year-old Hu Mengyu, one of the five seriously injured in the stampede, regained consciousness Wednesday more than 30 hours after she was blacked out. Still unable to talk, she wrote on a slip of paper that she was "sad" and unable to recall what happened.
"She wrote she wanted to see her teachers and classmates," said Hu's mother Zhou Tai, who was keeping Hu company at an intensive care unit at the Second People's Hospital in Xiangxiang. "But she was asleep when her teacher visited her later on Wednesday."
The city's health chief Bao Zhiping said Wednesday Hu was one of the three critical cases. "They'll be out of danger if no infection or complication occurs."
Yucai Middle School has revamped its safety rules by rescheduling classes to avoid rush hour crowds.
The school has 3,626 junior high students stuffed in 52 classrooms, averaging 70 in each class compared with the maximum 50 set by the local education bureau.
"The school is apparently overcrowded," said Liao Weiqian, Party chief with the city's education bureau.
The government subsidy for nine-year compulsory education the school receives is allocated for 50 students in each class. "We don't grant subsidies for the surplus students in order to discourage schools from recruiting too many," said Liao.
The government subsidy averages just a few hundred yuan a year for each student, but Yucai, considered to be one of the best schools in Xiangxiang, charges tuition fees much higher than that.
While Chinese public schools offer junior high education for free, private schools are allowed to charge tuition fees. Many parents also had to pay 6,000 to 10,000 yuan in "sponsorship fees" for their children to be admitted by Yucai.
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