Taming of the Yangtze: China celebrates. No rest for dam fatalities on-site.

By Other News Sources on November 8, 2002 • ( Leave a comment )

Lisa Peryman
November 8, 2002

This week the world took note, as jubilant Chinese officials looked on while a convoy of trucks dumped the last of the boulders that would finally tame the once mighty Yangtze to make way for the country’s monumental Three Gorges dam.

As China’s power elite congratulated itself in a state-televised ceremony on the blocking of a diversion canal that had allowed the Yangtze River free flow around the dam as it was being built, a senior project official publicly downplayed the project’s casualties – the 200 workers who have lost their lives on the job since construction began a decade ago.

In a report published by the U.S.-based Chinese News Net (Duowei xinwen she), Peng Qiyou, head of construction for the Three Gorges Project Development Corporation, announced the dam’s accidental death toll of 200 was low compared to China’s other large-scale engineering works.

Mr. Peng said he attributed Three Gorges’ moderate mortality rate to the implementation of strictly enforced safety measures and increased mechanization, requiring less manual labour to operate. The Gezhouba dam project, for example – the first hydroelectric scheme to dam the Yangtze, completed in 1988 – had a 100,000-strong workforce, more than twice that of Three Gorges at 40,000.

It is a phenomenon peculiar to China’s ambitious public works projects that burial grounds are created in the midst of engineering sites to lay employee casualties to rest. According to Duowei xinwen she, on-the-job cemeteries offer convenient interment and give fellow workers the opportunity to pay their respects to deceased friends and colleagues. Asked why the Three Gorges dam site had no such space allocated to bury its dead, Mr. Peng indicated the project’s low death toll did not warrant it, but revealed a plan was underway to erect a monument on-site to commemorate those who had sacrificed themselves in the dam’s creation.

Of the 200 Three Gorges’ workers who have died to date, most have perished in auto accidents, construction-related incidents, and as a result of various other unspecified mishaps, Mr. Peng told reporters. A risky business, Three Gorges’ workers are not without insurance. Dam labourers are covered by the Three Gorges Project Development Corporation for US$20,000 each. The corporation insures its roster of technicians and officials at a higher rate.

The 200 casualties includes only those deaths that occurred at the dam site and not casualties that occurred at project-related sites, such as resettlement towns constructed to house the more than 1.2 million people who will be displaced by the dam.

In the future, Mr. Peng said any company contracted by the corporation involved in an accident where human error was to blame, will not be allowed to continue work on Three Gorges.