News
Villagers wait for end to sinkhole hell
By Lu Chang (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-26 08:12
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Villagers whose houses collapsed as a result of illegal mining in Fengtai district are still waiting for subsidies they were promised by the township government.
The residents had opposed the illegal coal mining beneath Xiyuetai in Fangshan district ever since it began in 2003 but the excavations never stopped, a village security official surnamed Yu told METRO.
And he said things went from bad to worse when about 20 homes disappeared into sinkholes caused by the mines and those that were left standing had massive cracks and structural damage. There were 593 people in 253 households in the village. Most residents in Xiyuetai, which sits on the slopes of a coal mining mountain in the southwest of Fangshan District, were forced to abandon their homes out of fears that the buildings still standing could fall down at any minute.
About 90 people remain, said Yu Keqing, the owner of a two-storey house that vanished into a 10-m pit on March 24.
In response to the devastation, the district government said, from April 1, villagers could apply for 1,500 yuan a month in subsidy to temporarily rent a house while the government builds new permanent housing - both for those whose houses had collapsed and for people with unsafe homes, a government-released fax to METRO showed. The plan was confirmed by a press official with Fangshan district government, surnamed Wei.
Yu said experts and officers from Beijing municipal bureau of land and resources and Fangshan government surveyed the subsidence and measured the houses recently, but the results have not been released yet.
Yu said he has received 1,000 yuan a month since last year, but admitted other people who moved to new places had not received any compensation.
Other residents in Xiyuetai confirmed they had not been paid the subsidy. Yu Qing, a villager, whose house developed cracks in 2008 before disappearing into a pit after sudden subsidence in March, said he heard villagers would be relocated but no action had been taken so far.
He now lives in a village in Daxing district and pays a monthly rent of more than 1,000 yuan.
The security guard Yu said he worked in the village for just 700 yuan a month.
"Since my house disappeared from the ground and fell into the pit, my family has been living in hell and we can barely pay the rent. I think we have been discarded by the government because no one really cares about our living conditions," he said.
