2008 victim's struggle for compensation
By Dong Zhen |
July 28, 2011, Thursday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
ZHOU Jun, who lost part of her leg in a train accident in 2008, said her compensation was barely enough to support her recovery.
Last Saturday's bullet train crash brought back memories of the day her life changed for ever.
In an interview yesterday with Today Morning Express, a Zhejiang Province newspaper, she recalled the difficulties she had to endure as she and many other victims sought to talk to the railway ministry about compensation.
When the train she was on derailed in China's eastern Shandong Province, 72 passengers died and 416 others were injured.
The then 28-year-old suffered bleeding in the brain, broken ribs, a fractured pelvis and broken bones in her legs.
To save her life, doctors had to amputate the lower part of her right leg.
The families of those who died were each given 200,000 yuan (US$31,000) compensation by the railway ministry. For the injured, like Zhou, the money offered was much lower and depended on the degree of injury. Zhou did not say how much she had received but said her artificial leg, bought from Germany because it was of better quality, cost her family 800,000 yuan. Compensation only covered a small portion of that.
"The railway authority paid for a domestic product for me. But after using it for a while, I found it too difficult to adapt to. I wanted to walk and live like a normal person," she said. "But the railway officials refused when I asked to replace it with an imported one."
She said the money she had spent on rehabilitation and medical treatment over the past three years far exceeded the compensation paid to her.
Zhou said her hope was that the survivors of Saturday's crash would not have to suffer as she did.
Last Saturday's bullet train crash brought back memories of the day her life changed for ever.
In an interview yesterday with Today Morning Express, a Zhejiang Province newspaper, she recalled the difficulties she had to endure as she and many other victims sought to talk to the railway ministry about compensation.
When the train she was on derailed in China's eastern Shandong Province, 72 passengers died and 416 others were injured.
The then 28-year-old suffered bleeding in the brain, broken ribs, a fractured pelvis and broken bones in her legs.
To save her life, doctors had to amputate the lower part of her right leg.
The families of those who died were each given 200,000 yuan (US$31,000) compensation by the railway ministry. For the injured, like Zhou, the money offered was much lower and depended on the degree of injury. Zhou did not say how much she had received but said her artificial leg, bought from Germany because it was of better quality, cost her family 800,000 yuan. Compensation only covered a small portion of that.
"The railway authority paid for a domestic product for me. But after using it for a while, I found it too difficult to adapt to. I wanted to walk and live like a normal person," she said. "But the railway officials refused when I asked to replace it with an imported one."
She said the money she had spent on rehabilitation and medical treatment over the past three years far exceeded the compensation paid to her.
Zhou said her hope was that the survivors of Saturday's crash would not have to suffer as she did.
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