Villagers in remote areas in Tibet will no longer have to traverse rivers using zip-lines, which are often used for entertainment elsewhere, as the Tibet regional government is planning to replace the inclined cables with bridges.
"Zip-lines should be used for tourism and adventure only," said Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Tibet regional government, at a regional government work meeting on Tuesday.
The chairman ordered the authorities of finance, transport, planning and poverty alleviation to draw a detailed plan as soon as possible, so as to replace zip-lines with bridges in the coming one or two years.
There are 82 zip-lines in the remote mountainous areas of Tibet, according to Wang Jian, an official with the region's poverty alleviation office. Twelve of the zip-lines are made of cowhide, which are more dangerous that those made of steel cable.
Propelled by gravity, users can traverse from the top to the bottom of an inclined zip-line. Some school children in rural China use them to go to school every day, while tourists use zip-lines for entertainment.
Qiangba Puncog said the bridges replacing zip-lines did not have to be big ones that allow the passage of cars, "we can consider the construction of small bridges that people and livestock can walk on."
The chairman said the most urgent thing was to replace those cowhide-made zip-lines.
Infrastructure in Tibet has been developing over the past decades. Last year, the Tibet regional government built 9,616 kilometers of highways in the rural areas that enabled 848 villages to have access to the roads.
It also supplied electricity for about 180,000 people who had not previously had access to power or suffered from shortages. Safe drinking water was provided for 332,800 people.
In September, highway construction resumed for Medog, China's last roadless county in Tibet with a population of merely 10,000. The first plan on a highway to Medog was drawn in 1961, but had been suspended several times due to tough geological conditions and poor technology.
In 1994, a highway was finished to reach Medog for the first time but parts of it were soon destroyed by landslides.
Source: Xinhua
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