BEIJING: China has ordered 31 people to be placed under "coercive measures" for a collapse last year at a construction site that killed 73 people, the state news agency reported Saturday.
Coercive measures are a form of detention that can range from constant surveillance to outright arrest. It is often used against people accused of endangering national security.
The punishment follows the collapse in November 2016 of a platform being built for a cooling tower at a power plant in southern China, killing 73 people, injuring two more and causing losses of $15.6 million.
A government report says investigators concluded that the accident was caused by a range of issues, including poor supervision "and the building company's failure to fulfill its work safety responsibilities," the Xinhua news agency said.
The names and job positions of those punished were not given, nor was the company's name.
China has a long history of deadly construction accidents, sometimes caused by workers cutting corners as they rush to meet deadlines.
But pressure has ratcheted up in recent years for better regulations, safety training and equipment. While 19,783 people died in Chinese industrial accidents in the first seven months of 2017, according to the State Administration of Work Safety, that was down almost 17 percent compared to the same period in 2016.