S'pore-listed company provides temporary housing for quake victims
By Chio Su-Mei, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 20 May 2008 2142 hrs

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SINGAPORE: In the "many-helping-hands" approach to help the quake victims in China, a Singapore-listed multinational company is using its student dormitories as temporary shelters.

More than 440 quake victims of Shuang Liu county have settled into 110 student dormitories, provided by WBL Corporation Limited (Wearnes), and they will be there for the next five months.

Tan Choon Seng, Group CEO, WBL Corporation, said: "We are very close to the people in Chengdu because our association goes back a very long way. Other than the 250 employees that we currently have in Chengdu, we also know the government quite well. Therefore, we feel a need to do a little bit for the people who are affected."

"These are our colleagues and our friends, so we were actually frantically trying to contact them. When we saw how bad the situation was, we were very saddened," said Irene Lye, group general manager of Group Enterprise Risk Management, WBL Corporation.

Together with its China-based subsidiaries and associate companies, Wearnes has raised about S$126,000 (RMB 630,000) for the quake relief efforts.

It is also happy to report that all of its China-based staff are safe.


- CNA/so