July 24, the Ministry of Railways party decided to fire Long Jing the head of the Shanghai Railway Bureau, Li Jia, head of Shanghai Railway Bureau’s committee of Communist Part of China and He Shengli, deputy chief of the bureau.
The fire of the there was no more than 24 hours since the accident occurred. Such a quick accountability transfer a signal that the Ministry of Railways urgently desires the credibility to the public and tries to pacify the families of the victims, and begs for the public forgiveness. Indeed, it should be punished the people who must take the responsibility for this accident, otherwise, the public anger will bulk as the snowball.
The head of the bureau deserved his punishment because the Ministry of Railways already had required to the departments to check all the equipments of the rails for the long-term bad weather and replace the malfunctions especially the bullet trains. The accident still occurred anyway, it might enough to prove that those officials ignored the orders and cheated on the execution.
The fire of the high level officials is just the first step to gain the trust from the public. Look through all the process of this tragedy, there are still so many officials should be punished obviously not just the 3 fired ones, the investigation is not over.
Of course, punishment is not the final goal of the investigation, finding out truth is the most important task after the rescuing. As Hu Jingtao and Wen Jiao the head of the administration ordered “must find out the real cause”. The Ministry of Railways explained that the lightning strikes must be the trigger of the accident but did not be accepted by the public yet, so what is the truth?
Punishment is just a necessary link to deal with the emergency accident, should basic thing should be warn the relative departments to avoid tragedies and never make the same mistake again. The institute should be reconstructed to avoid the possibility the tragedies happen again, which tests the relative departments’ talent and determination.
Source: People’s Daily Online
Translated and edited by Yang Jingmin