(December 30, 1998) Prime Minister Zhu Rongji Wednesday warned engineers building the massive Three Gorges Dam to avoid “carelessness or negligence” in its construction, the state-controlled Xinhua news agency said.

“Quality means the life of the Three Gorges Project, and the responsibility on your shoulder is heavier than a mountain.

“Any carelessness or negligence will bring disaster to our future generations and cause irretrievable losses,” Zhu told dam workers at the construction site in the city of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province.

Zhu noted the ongoing second-phase of construction was an extremely critical stage and expressed the hope all those engaged on the project would show a “high sense of historical responsibility and strive for first-class engineering quality for the dam,” Xinhua said.

“A strict engineering-quality monitoring system must be introduced into the Three Gorges Project,” said Zhu.

“When necessary, we can invite some foreign engineering-monitoring companies with good reputations and experience to help us monitor the quality of some critical parts of the dam.”

He added efforts must be made to improve the management of funds for the Three Gorges Project and strengthen supervision over the use of these funds.

“We must establish a strict auditing system and increase transparency in the use of the funds, to make sure that not a penny of project funds is misused or diverted,” he stressed.

The premier also underlined the work of relocating the more than one million residents in the Three Gorges area to make way for the dam.

“A successful relocation is key to the development of the Three Gorges Project,” he said.

The 632 square kilometer (252 square mile) Three Gorges reservoir, which is due to be filled in 2003, will force the resettlement of 1.2 million people.

The central government expects to spend 40 billion yuan ($4.8 billion) for resettlement by the dam’s completion in 2009.

But according to Chinese sociologists, resettlement work has been plagued by corruption, falsification of figures, poor planning and inadequate resources.

In March officials from the area around the planned Three Gorges Dam appealed to neighboring provinces to help relocate hundreds of thousands of villagers being made homeless by the mammoth project.

December 30, 1998