Hanoi - A structural specialist had warned the main contractor on a bridge project that collapsed and killed at least 50 workers last week in Vietnam that the scaffolding was too weak and "very dangerous," local media reported Tuesday. The structural specialist, Hiroshi Kudo, sent a memo to Taisei-Kajima-Nippon Steel (TKN) on June 27 urging the Japanese consortium to "reinforce immediately" the scaffolding and support for the 343-million-dollar Can Tho Bridge project, newspapers said.
Workers are still clearing the rubble of concrete and steel from the collapse of a 100-metre section of the bridge, which collapsed last Wednesday in southern Vinh Long province.
The Vietnamese newspaper Tuoi Tre (Youth) reprinted portions of the memo which read "the calculating table of the temporary support work shows a very low safety ratio and it is very dangerous in many points."
"This condition is very dangerous," the memo read.
Officials investigating the cause of the bridge collapse have said they are focusing on the scaffolding strength.
Niether Kudo nor TKN officials were available for comment on Tuesday and declined comment to Vietnamese media.
However, another Vietnamese newspaper, Thanh Nien, reported Tuesday that TKN actually had strengthened the scaffolding after the memo but "the accident still happened."
The chief investigator into the cause of Vietnam's largest construction disaster in years, Pham Quy Ngo of the Ministry of Public Security, declined to comment on the memo.
"What the newspapers say is just what the newspapers say. We are still investigating," Ngo said by telephone Tuesday.
At least 50 people have been confirmed dead and about 100 construction workers were hospitalized after the bridge collapse.
The project has been touted the largest cable-bridge in Vietnam, linking two banks of Hau River, a tributary to Mekong River now crossable only by ferry.
