scandalShanghai, Nov 15 (AFP) China's leading online travelagency said today it had suspended two top officials afterdisturbing video footage of workers abusing toddlers at acompany daycare went viral, sparking nationwide outrage.
Clips began to surface last week showing young childrenof Ctrip employees being roughly handled, and punished bybeing force-fed what parents claimed was spicy mustard at thecompany's Shanghai headquarters.
Shi Qi, a group vice president, and vice president FengWeihua were suspended by Ctrip pending an internalinvestigation, according to a company letter circulatedonline.
A Ctrip spokeswoman told AFP on Wednesday that the letterwas authentic.
Police last week said they had detained three daycarestaff for suspected abuse.
The company said the daycare centre has since been shut.
Ctrip is China's biggest online booking site for air,rail and other travel. It bought British flight search appSkyscanner for $1.7 billion last year.
After the video of the abuse went viral, subsequent clipsemerged showing irate parents trying to take revenge byforcing what appeared to be spicy mustard into the mouth ofone of the accused female staff members, as police sought tohold them back.
Another clip showed the same woman on her knees, bowingand apologising profusely for her "errors".
Ctrip had outsourced daily operations of the daycarecentre to Shanghai Women, part of a nationwide organisationthat aims to protect women's rights in China.
"It is hard to imagine that we are coding upstairs andyou are abusing our babies downstairs," wrote one man onWeibo, China's equivalent of Twitter, claiming to be thefather of a child that attended the daycare.
He added that it had been very hard to get his childadmitted to the daycare, which has a waiting list.
About 100 children, all aged below three, attended thedaycare centre in the past three months, Ctrip said.(AFP)AMS.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.