(Ecns.cn)--Campus violence has continued to hit China as a near blast was reported two weeks ago in Chongqing, a municipality in southwestern China, when a desperate husband intended to blow up a kindergarten where his wife worked.
This reminded local residents of another tragic incident that hit headlines earlier in January, in which one teen was stabbed to death by his schoolmate.
School violence has not been an uncommon occurrence in recent years, as an increasing number of such incidents have been witnessed across the country.
During a short period of 50 days between March and May last year, a total of 10 children and teenagers were killed in 6 rampages targeting middle school students and kindergarten kids in various regions including Fujian, Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Shaanxi provinces. In these cases, men assaulted the defenseless group to vent their dissatisfactions with the society.
This series of dreadful slaughters thus stirred concerns over campus security in the country, said the China Youth Daily on Thursday.
Safety hazards
As a reaction to the rising concerns and a precautionary measure, Beijing authorities conducted a thorough investigation in the city's 5,300 elementary and secondary schools as well as kindergartens.
They concluded that security facilities and forces are better installed in the public and registered private schools than in unregistered ones. The most vulnerable schools are the private schools seated in urban fringe zones and compact communities with a floating population as they are barely guarded with any securities measures, according to official statistics. In addition, only 4,000 security guards have been allocated in the 2,200 private schools in the city, an average of 1.8 for each school.
Outdated security facilities, according to the Public Security authority in Zhejiang Province, have also been a hazard to school security. Most surveillance cameras on campuses, if installed, either have long been broken or partly destroyed. Many crowded places including student canteens, have failed to be covered while a considerable number of the alarm devices are out of order.
Similar to the troubles prickling Beijing, quite a few private schools in Zhejiang that dodged government supervision have cut out the step of taking any security measures.
Schools in rural areas, without a surprise, have overtaken their urban counterparts with bigger hazards in safeguarding the students. Official statistics from the Guangdong government indicated that scattered in the vast lands of rural areas, school security has posed a major challenge for local governments due to the shortage of police forces.
School security loopholes are even bigger in the undeveloped regions of western and southwestern China. Guizhou Province, for instance, has 8,000 schools and kindergartens that fail to deploy any security guards or even gate keepers.
Most of such loopholes are caused due in part to the lack of money in private schools, commented the newspaper. Therefore, they tend to ignore the potential campus violence that might occur in the unguarded environment, or don't bother to install any security facilities.
Public schools, on the other hand, have difficulties hiring trained professional security guards due to the shortage of such groups in market. As an alternative, many unqualified security guards are hired, which in turn, stirs concerns over their capacity to handle an emergency.
