Shortage threatens elevator safety

Shanghai suffers from a shortage of elevator maintenance workers, a local quality control association found in a survey published Thursday.

The Shanghai Association for Quality found there are about 3,000 maintenance workers who do regular check-ups and repairs on the city's roughly 160,000 elevators, according to the survey.

That's about two workers for every 100 elevators in the city, one-quarter of the number needed to meet national standards, said Han Heying, a senior official from the Shanghai Elevator Trade Association. "Under national standards, each maintenance worker should be looking after no more than 25 elevators," Han told the Global Times. "It's impossible to meet the standard now."

Han said the number of elevators in the city is growing by 10 percent to 15 percent a year, and the number of elevator maintenance workers needs to keep up.

The Shanghai Association for Quality polled 2,200 individuals and companies for its survey, including 200 elevator manufacturing and maintenance firms.

Elevator safety became a public concern after several high-profile accidents occurred last year, including a woman who died after falling six floors down an elevator shaft in a department store, according to local media reports.

Eighteen people have died in elevator accidents since 2006, including two deaths in 2012, according to the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision.

The association pinned the worker shortage on low wages. Elevator maintenance workers make about 3,000 yuan ($490) a month, but it's not enough. "Although we work with vocational schools to recruit young migrant workers from outside of the city each year, the supply can't meet the demand," Han said. "And young workers are reluctant to stay in the industry for very long."

The survey suggested that the industry has had trouble supporting itself. The monthly maintenance fee for 30 percent of elevators in residential compounds is less than 300 yuan, it said.

The Shanghai Elevator Trade Association suggests that the elevator maintenance fee for each elevator should be no less than 500 yuan a month.

Many property management companies, which typically contract the elevator maintenance companies for their residential buildings, resort to hiring cheap and under-qualified elevator maintenance services because of their own ongoing and well-publicized problem with collecting payments from property owners, said Qin Jiong, director of the general office of the Shanghai Elevator Trade Association.

The property management companies can skimp on elevator maintenance because Chinese law currently doesn't stipulate who is responsible when an elevator accident occurs. A new law that takes effect next year will change that.

Under the law, property management companies will be responsible for elevator accidents in the buildings they supervise unless residents have hired another company to oversee elevator maintenance.