BEIJING-- A government official said that inspection teams are ready to conduct safety checks on the nation's high-speed railways, as ordered by the State Council, or China's cabinet.

The 12 teams, consisting of a total of 286 railway experts and government officials, will inspect a total of 49 high-speed railway projects currently under construction, as well as 6,000 km of high-speed railways currently in operation, said Huang Yi, a spokesman from the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS).

The government announced earlier this month that it would conduct safety checks on its high-speed railways from mid-August to mid-September in order to prevent major accidents in the wake of a fatal train collision that killed 40 people near the city of Wenzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province on July 23.

Huang said that the government is speeding up its efforts to revise the country's work safety laws. He added that the revisions will require safety facilities to be simultaneously designed and installed alongside future construction projects.