China: Preschool owner arrested over deadly bus crash

The owner of a preschool responsible for a heavily overloaded bus involved in a deadly crash has been arrested, reports said Monday.

A total of 64 people were aboard the bus when it collided with a truck in Qingyang city in Gansu province Wednesday, killing 19 children, a teacher and the driver. All 43 other children aboard, aged between three and five, were injured.

The vehicle was originally designed to carry just nine people, Xinhua news agency said, but all the seats had been removed in order to cram in more passengers.

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Li Jungang, owner of the bus and chairman of the Little Doctor Kindergarten where the children were pupils, was arrested on charges of causing a traffic accident.

He faces a sentence of more than seven years in prison, the BBC said.

The private preschool he ran had just four buses for over 700 children, Xinhua said. Each vehicle had had all its seats removed.

The families of the children killed will each receive 436,000 yuan ($68,500) in compensation, according to government officials.

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The preschool will be close and replaced with a public kindergarten, Qingyang city officials said, promising that more money would be invested to build an extra 200 new public preschools in the area. An oil company has donated a replacement bus.

Loopholes in safety regulations allow schools to get away with running overcrowded buses to save money, Beijing University education professor Yuan Guilin told China Daily.

Many rural families have to send their children on the long journey to school on dangerously overloaded buses because the fares are cheaper, the news site said.

One villager from Qingyang said:

"We know that the school buses are overloaded and we complain about it, but we have no better choice. It is the only economic way to send children to the only kindergarten in our county."

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