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The National People's Congress (Chinese Legislature) amended a law to compel schools in China to improve its standards of construction, a reform that occurs in the wake of the earthquake in Wenchuan, last May 12, 14,000 schools were destroyed or suffer damage.

The amendment of the law on earthquake safety and disaster attention was approved yesterday, Saturday, at the last annual session of the assembly, reported today the state agency Xinhua.

It stipulates that schools must have standards of construction even higher than the houses and other buildings, especially in case of earthquake, and also bind to carry out improvement works and strengthening of existing schools.

In addition, the law will introduce courses of action in case of earthquake for the students, which until now did not exist despite the fact that many areas of China have a high seismic activity.

The Chinese government refuses to provide figures on how many students died in schools collapsed in the earthquake of May, although it is known that they were an important part of the nearly 90,000 victims totals.

There was relatively remote villages to the epicenter of the earthquake, as Juyú (Sichuan province), where most of the houses resisted the earthquake of 8 degrees of magnitude but the local school collapsed.

The earthquake brought to light the poor quality of the materials with which many schools are built in China and aroused the suspicions of embezzlement and corruption in local governments to grant projects to construction of schools.

According to the agency Xinhua, the poor quality of construction in Chinese schools, especially in rural areas, "has long been a concern for many," but it had to happen an earthquake to show the seriousness of the issue.

The legal amendment, which comes into force on May 1 2009, also requires raising the standards of construction of public buildings such as hospitals, shopping centers and communications hubs.