Where Did Their "61" Go?

More than 14000 students in Wenchuan have no place to resume their classes. After disaster, Wenchuan encountered a thorny problem in continuing disaster relief and preparing for reconstruction. Due to lack of venues and facilities, and after the disaster, there were more than 14000 students who had difficulty in resuming classes.

The Wenchuan county government said yesterday that they could solve their problems by themselves, but the more than 10 thousand children need to urgently seek help from the whole country to resume their lessons.

At present, more than 400 senior middle school students in Wenchuan have resumed classes at Wei Zhou middle school.

Hu Zhengan, director of the Education Bureau of Wenchuan County, said that there were 1302 teachers and 15000 students in Wenchuan county. As of yesterday, 28 teachers and 374 students were killed in the earthquake.

After the earthquake, all schools in Wenchuan county had a holiday.

In recent days, a large number of teachers and students have asked to resume classes. Apart from Weizhou secondary school in Wenchuan, Wenchuan has set up a resumption point in 3 schools, including Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu Medical College and Chengdu University, around Chengdu, but it can only accommodate more than 800 students.

"The biggest difficulty in resuming classes is the lack of site conditions and equipment."

Hu Zhengan said that after the earthquake, many schools in Wenchuan were destroyed by debris flow and mountain collapse, and the conditions for resuming the course were lost.

There are only a few places where lessons can be resumed because of lack of accommodation and teaching facilities for students and teachers, coupled with aftershocks, can not meet the requirements of resuming classes.

At present, Wenchuan's counterpart support unit, Guangdong Province, has already sent an emergency 5000 square meter activity room in the Weizhou middle school. After the completion of the activity room, it can accommodate 400 to 500 students and teachers to stay and study, but this is far from satisfying the needs of Wenchuan students to resume classes.

According to the data provided by the Education Department of Wenchuan, there are more than 2900 senior high school students in Wenchuan, more than 4600 junior high school students, more than 7600 primary school students, more than 400 kindergarten students. Apart from the 3 students returning from the Weizhou middle school and around Chengdu, as well as the students who are visiting relatives and friends, students in Wenchuan still need more than 14000 students to reopen classes.

"We hope that the surrounding areas and other provinces and cities can provide us with the resumption of classes and equipment, or accept some of our students, so that they can resume their lessons in different places, so that we can have a pitional stage before we have the conditions for resuming classes."

Hu Zhengan said that at present they are doing their best to set up the pition point of primary school, junior high school, high school and so on. But before the resumption of the course is established, Wenchuan urgently hopes that more than 14000 students who will survive the future and bear the future hope of Wenchuan will not interrupt their studies.

Wenchuan County resumption assistance telephone number: 0837-6222550, Aba state education commission telephone: 0837-2824713.