China had set up 26,730 temporary houses by Wednesday for those left homeless by the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan and other areas, said a high-ranking official from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MHURD) Thursday.

Qi Ji, MHURD vice minister, said at a press conference here that the authorities were erecting another 14,353 makeshift shelters in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces and altogether, 68,448 were scheduled to go up.

"With the assistance of provinces nationwide, China is producing about 5,000 pieces of pre-fabricated buildings daily in June," said Qi, adding the production, shipment and erection was going smoothly.

The quake, which had claimed 69,127 lives as of Thursday noon, affected 45.71 million people, according to the Information Office of the State Council.

Qi told Xinhua that the task of producing 265,000 pieces of movable plank houses for victims by June 30 was actually an "arduous" one, but the government had mobilized more than 230 enterprises in 23 localities nationwide to work round the clock for achieving this goal.

He predicted that for turning out 1 million movable houses, about480,000 tonnes of pre-coated sheet steel and 200,000 tonnes of strip steel were needed, adding that currently the materials were in short supply on the market.

The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council ordered Baosteel, the country's largest steel maker, and other big state-owned steel makers, including Angang Steel, Wuhan Iron and Steel Corporation, to endeavor to meet the quake reconstruction demands.

Qi said the movable houses could stand more than three years, while the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planner, forecasted it would take three years to complete the post-quake reconstruction.

The Sichuan construction agency has formulated quality check standards for those temporary houses, including specific technical requirements for anti-quake, fire-proof performance and structural strength.

The quake-hit local government, the Sichuan construction authorities and the construction agencies in the places of movable houses production would jointly check and ensure their quality, said Qi.

Official figures showed that 820,000 tents and 4.7 million quilts had been shipped to the quake zone as of Thursday noon.

(Xinhua News Agency June 6, 2008)