A local construction official said on Friday that all school buildings being rebuilt in Chengdu, capital of southwest Sichuan Province, would be "high-quality" and quake-proof.

Huang Ping, director of the Chengdu Construction Commission, told a press conference that the designs for new school buildings were all up to national quake-resistance standards and the province would spare no effort to build high-quality schools.

China announced Thursday that 5,335 students had been confirmed killed or missing in Sichuan after the 8.0 earthquake struck May 12 last year.

Statistics from the provincial education department showed that 3,340 schools needed to be rebuilt after the earthquake.

After the quake, China's national legislature amended the Law on Precautions Against Earthquake and Relief of Disaster last year, which said schools and hospitals must be designed to stand strong earthquakes. School buildings should withstand quakes of at least 8.0. The new law took effect last Friday.

The official said experts had been sent to foreign countries such as Japan to learn useful techniques in rebuilding quake-proof schools.

The official said the cost to build one local school, a project that Shanghai aided, had exceeded 4,000 yuan (US$586.36) per square meter, the same price of local commercial apartment buildings.

Farmers had been urged to stop building their own houses, which failed to meet construction standards, Huang said.

The central government had allocated 220.3 billion yuan to Sichuan to help reconstruction, and provincial and grassroots financial authorities planned to contribute another 41.2 billion yuan, according to Liu Jie, director of the Sichuan Provincial Development and Reform Commission, the provincial economic planning body.

Yu Wei, spokesman of the provincial government, said Thursday that the speed of construction in urban areas lagged behind that of rural areas in the province. He did not give any reason.

Reconstruction of rural housing was scheduled to be finished before September, while the target for urban buildings was next May, he said.

He said the province would try to speed up construction in urban areas by offering subsidies and providing technical support.

(Xinhua News Agency May 8, 2009)