Chinese Builder Linked to Bangkok Tower Collapse Under Scrutiny

Thai officials and police are investigating a Chinese building company linked to the collapse of a 30-storey tower in Bangkok on Friday.

There is concern about the company’s standards and the suspicious behaviour of people reportedly linked to the firm in the aftermath of the disaster, which followed a 7.7 magnitude quake in central Myanmar.

Construction of a new State Audit Office was being done by PKW, a joint venture of Italian-Thai Development, a publicly listed local building giant, and a subsidiary of China Railway No.10 Engineering Group. Concern focuses on the latter firm – part of the state-owned China Railway Engineering Corp (CREC), in regard to the quality of steel in the project, plus the building’s design and the activities of a group of men at the site after the disaster.

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Senior government officials said on Sunday that investigators from Thailand’s Ministry of Industry have taken samples of construction materials from the site, where a rescue operation seeking survivors caught in the massive pile of rubble, has continued around the clock.

The quality of the steel bars is a key focus, partly because the ministry recently took action against seven Thai and foreign joint ventures producing and selling substandard steel bars. Their factories were closed because of the risk to public safety, according to a ministry spokesman who spoke to media on Sunday.

Pongpol Yodmuangcharoen, secretary to the Industry Minister Akanat Promphan, said substandard steel bars normally break, rather than bend to absorb the powerful force of an earthquake, the Bangkok Post reported.

Anutin Charnvirakul, Thailand’s Deputy PM and industry minister, who is overseeing the rescue operation, has said buildings are required by law to be earthquake resistant and an inquiry has already started into whether the State Audit Office tower also met design standards.

Anutin said the builders – Ital-Thai and a subsidiary of China Railway No.10 Engineering Group – will be held accountable for the disaster as the new Audit Office tower was the only building that collapsed in Bangkok after the quake. And he believed any problems in the building would be identified.

Senior engineers from the Department of Public Works and Town and Country Planning, and other construction experts are looking into the matter.

Chinese seen taking documents from site office

Meanwhile, police were questioning five Chinese nationals and a Thai interpreter on Sunday after a group of men entered the disaster site in Chatuchak, in northern Bangkok – supposed to be off-limits while delicate rescue operation plugs on – and allegedly “fled with document files.”

Police had rushed to the scene after a witness alerted police to the presence of these men at a temporary office on the State Audit Office block, as their presence and activity was seen as suspicious. The men had left but the Chinese director of the project identified the six, who were ordered to report to Thai authorities with the documents they took, the Post said.

About three dozen document files were seized and are now being inspected by authorities. The company’s posts on the Internet were all deleted, according to another report.

Anutin said the probe committee, set up by the PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra, would also look into such matters this week.

The Thai building group, Ital-Thai, also has a mixed record. There have been several fatal accidents on the Rama 2 expressway that heads southwest out of Bangkok, including a beam collapse just days earlier that left six dead and 24 injured. The company, involved in many government projects, is also said to be facing a debt crisis.

Thai officials are in crisis mode because the quake and the building collapse has cast a shadow over safety standards and that poses a clear risk to one of its biggest sectors – tourism, which involves 15-20% of the country’s workforce and a similar share of its economy.

Videos of the Audit Office collapse have been seen all around the world and the drama has already caused tourists to fly out, despite the death toll still being relatively low – just 17 on Monday, with close to 80 reported as missing. Many are thought to be Burmese or Cambodian migrant workers, who play a large role in construction and other industries that Thais regard as too dirty or dangerous.

In terms of the investigation, Thais know that such probes can take curious twists. The country has been accused many times of downplaying local responsibility for deaths or dramas that can tarnish its reputation as a safe tourist destination.

Many Bangkokians have shrugged off the drama and got on with their lives, but some uncertainty remains. There were a dozen small aftershocks in Myanmar on Monday morning that led to minor tremors in the Thai capital – and workers fleeing government offices in the city’s north and some highrise buildings in the city centre which had cracks. But engineers who arrived to check buildings said the cracks all occurred on Friday and the structures were still sound.

Deeper questions for Bangkok – and Myanmar

There are deeper questions over this incident: Have the Chinese been ‘dumping’ excess or poor quality steel in Southeast Asia and other countries because its massive output vastly exceeds local demand.

A YouTube report in December said more than 70 Chinese steel mills had collapsed and 100,000 workers laid off because of weak demand and falling prices stemming from the prolonged real estate slump that has allegedly left the country with 300 million empty apartments.

And could the local builder’s alleged “debt crunch” have spurred bosses and overseers to rush the project?

Some reports have said the 30-storey building was only a third complete: Were corners cut? These are questions the government is likely to answer in coming days.

Looking forward, there could be important repercussions, such as a complete rejig of height limits for high-rise buildings and whether building pools on giant towers is such a wise move.

Meanwhile, the media spotlight is already turning to Myanmar, where there are issues many times more troubling; over 1,700 people dead so far (with the toll rising fast); over 3 million people displaced by the four-year-old war, and a military regime that Reuters says was still bombing civilian targets hours after the earthquake occurred.

Naypyidaw, the new capital, was hit hard, raising fears that political prisoners in its jails may have been killed, and concern over Aung San Suu Kyi – who will be 80 in mid-June.