The 74 refurbished elevators which were assembled illegally and sold in Xiaoshan in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, have been forced to stop operation. But surprisingly, only one "part-time" employee of a local elevator company was suspected of illegally recycling and selling the elevators, and only one supervisor took the blame for lack of proper inspection, says an article in Beijing News. Excerpts:

A worker died while working on a refurbished elevator that had been scrapped earlier, highlighting the illegal business in reassembled elevators and raising widespread social concern. Investigators probing the incident found and ordered the scrapping of 74 problematic elevators. But so far, local authorities have zeroed in on only one suspect.

It is both unbelievable and impossible that one person ran the entire process of recycling, refurbishing, selling and installing scrapped elevators.

An elevator inspection can be divided into four stages. It starts with tests conducted by special equipment inspectors, moves onto verification by a competent engineer, after which it has to be approved by the people in charge. Finally, it is subjected to random checks by quality authorities any time during the course of the year.

So it's really strange that only one suspect and supervision lapse by only one official for all the 74 elevators were found.

Further investigations should be carried out to bring everyone responsible for the illegal business to book. It does not make any difference whether they shared the illegal benefits and/or were guilty of dereliction of duty.

(China Daily 12/23/2011 page9)