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Head of Beijing railway removed

China.org.cn, October 17, 2011

• Huang Guizhang.[File photo]

  Huang Guizhang, director of the Beijing Railway Bureau, was removed from his post on Thursday following a train derailment last week. However, the bureau said that his removal had nothing to do with the accident.

  Two officials in charge of repair and maintenance at the Beijing Railway Bureau were also sacked.

  According to China Daily, a ministry official said Huang was replaced by He Yuhua, a member of the ministry's Party leadership group and chairman of the All-China Federation of Railway Workers' Unions.

  The locomotive of a passenger train, traveling from Hancheng in Shaanxi province to Beijing, derailed near Shijingshan South Station on Oct 10. As the train was traveling at less than 30 kilometers an hour there were no casualties.

  The cause of the accident is still under investigation.

  The derailment happened after a two-month national railway safety checkup, which was instigated after the July 23 high-speed train crash that left 40 dead, had just ended and while the ministry is in the middle of a campaign to correct problems.

  Sheng Guangzu, the railways minister, summoned a meeting of railway officials the day after the accident and urged them to improve safety management to avoid any passenger train accident.

  Huang was given an administrative punishment at the meeting. But two days later, Huang, who has been head of Beijing Railway Bureau for three years, was sacked without any explicit reason being offered.

  The removal of Huang is being viewed as a clear sign of the Ministry of Railways' resolution to improve safety, insiders said.

  In the past, railway bureau chiefs such as Huang would receive only an administrative punishment when a major accident resulted in at least 30 deaths, or more than 100 injured, or a direct economic loss of 100 million yuan (US$16 million), Beijing News reported.

  But Sheng stressed at the meeting on Tuesday that the ministry would revise the existing measures and impose severer punishment on those found responsible for passenger train accidents.

  (China Daily contributed to this story)

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