City tightens quality control of budget housing

CONSTRUCTION watchdogs will intensify quality check of budget housing projects to prevent contractors from lowering quality standards to make illegal gains, Shanghai Vice Mayor Shen Jun said today. The city plans to build another 150 million square meters of affordable housing for low-income families this year. At the end of June, half of the projects, equal to 100,000 apartments, were under way, Shen said. By the end of this year, about 266,000 units of budget housing will be completed and sold at government-fixed prices. Officials said random checks on cement and concrete quality now cover 97 percent of the construction sites, compared with 86 percent last year. In response to the recent scandal in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, where some government-financed apartment buildings had to be demolished due to poor quality, Shen said the Shanghai government will tighten quality control measures to ensure budget housing projects free from substandard materials.

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