Kindergarten chairman detained over fatal school bus accident in NW China

The head of a kindergarten in northwest China's Gansu Province has been detained after a school bus accident on Wednesday that killed 20 people. Li Jungang, chairman of the Little Doctor Kindergarten in Zhengning County in the city of Qingyang, was detained on Wednesday because of liability issues, Zuo Jianghua, a spokesman for the Qingyang city government, said on Thursday. Fan Jungang, the driver of a truck that collided with the school bus, was also detained for causing the accident, said Zuo. Two deputy county chiefs and the heads of the county's education bureau and traffic department have been suspended from duty following the accident. The accident occurred in Yulinzi township of Zhengning County, where a nine-seat school bus illegally carrying 64 people collided head-on with a coal truck, killing 18 preschoolers and two adults and injuring another 44. Parents of students at the kindergarten said school bus overloading has been a problem for years, despite repeated complaints. An initial investigation showed that the school bus had its seats removed to make room for more passengers and was speeding in adverse weather conditions, Zuo said. The accident shocked the nation and already alerted governments in several provinces and cities which demanded comprehensive safety inspections of school buses. Lu Huadong, chief of the Education Bureau of Qingyang, admitted that the city, a poverty-stricken area, had a limited education budget on preschool education. According to Lu, the city has only some 40 public kindergartens and some of privately-run kindergartens often ignored safety rules to overload school buses in order to reduce the cost. The Little Doctor is the only kindergarten in Yulinzi township. With over 700 children, the privately-run kindergarten has only four vans. All seats have been removed so more passengers can be crammed in. "Merely three days before the accident, we discovered overloading of kindergarten school buses and ordered rectification, but the operators just ignored our request for the sake of profit," Lu said. In Zhengning, many privately-run kindergartens have emerged to look after preschoolers as many of their parents work away from home in cities. "In the beginning we sent and picked up our kids ourselves by bicycle. Later private kindergartens vying for business started school bus services to enroll more children," said a local resident who did not reveal his name. "Most of the 'buses' are actually vans, which are frequently overloaded," said the villager.