Rebuilding and repair work has begun on 61 percent of the farmhouses that collapsed in the May quake, while 35 percent of them are now finished, the Xinhua News Agency said on Tuesday.

The 1.49 million houses are located in Sichuan, Gansu, Shaanxi, Yunnan and Chongqing.

The central government has already allocated 30 billion yuan (US$4.4 billion) to the project and a further 10 billion yuan is in the pipeline.

(China Daily January 7, 2009)