Saturday, April 21, 2007

Cracked reservoirs like 'time bombs'
The Straits Times, Saturday April 21 2007

Summary
This article is about the dams in China experiencing structural problems, with the dams broken, lives are threatened and villages have to be evacuated.

It surfaced the problem with the construction of dams possibly because of contractors wanting to save costs. Even the world's largest hydroelectric project, the Three Gorges Dam already have cracks surfacing. 35.3% of its dams are facing serious structural problems, it is showing the seriousness and urgency in repairing those dams and also the plans by the China Government in repairing the dams. The report also says that experts have put the blame for some of the broken dams on faulty engineering.

It is basically just an article highlighting the concern from the Chinese officials towards the safety of the villagers living downstream from the dam.


Response
After reading the article, I personally feel that despite the boom in China's economy, it still has not done enough to help its villagers. The structural problems may be due to contractors trying to save-cost thus, lacking in quality control of the dams.

Instead of just repairing the dams, they should instead look at what the villagers want also. The pollution of water by industries upstream have an impact on the villagers downstream also, with environmental issues being debated so fiercely nowadays, I believe we should not only look at air pollution, we should also look at water pollution as water is also essential in our survivor.

Although this article may not directly be related to GP, it is however an article for us to think about those people who are living by the polluted rivers but can do nothing about it, it also raises awareness of how the possibility of corruption and level of quality control may take place to improve on the structure of the dams. This is needed so as to minimise the lost of innocent lives, these lives lost often go unnoticed as the fast pace society tends to forget about these people but focus more on the world business and economy news instead.

I applaud the Chinese officials in trying their best to help prevent the lost of lives for its people. At the same time, I hope that they can do more than just repairing the dams. Think about the pollution.

notswin is winston
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