Police on Thursday arrested Chen Ningxi, driver of a three-wheeled vehicle in which 14 children died and six were injured in an accident on Tuesday in central China's Hunan province.

Officials from the public security bureau of Hengnan county, Hunan province, inspect on Tuesday the three-wheeled vehicle that plunged into a creek while taking 20 children to school on Monday morning. The accident killed 14 children and injured six. [Photo/Xinhua]

The vehicle was taking 20 children to a primary school when it plunged into a creek at 7:30 am on Monday in Songjiang township, Hengnan county, in Hengyang city, leaving 14 dead and six injured.

The local government promised 180,000 yuan ($27,300) in compensation to every family of the dead on Thursday. The six injured are in stable condition in a local hospital.

The children were from Dongtang village and were traveling to school in neighboring Yinguo village when the vehicle ran off the road.

"Because the primary school in Dongtang had been ordered to close, we parents had to send our children to the school in Yinguo," Li Yuying, the mother of one of the dead students, was quoted as saying by Xinhua News Agency.

"We hired a driver to pick them up and take them to school."

The local police said the three-wheeled vehicle is registered for carrying cargo.

"The driver admitted the accident's main cause was that the vehicle was overloaded with students," Yang Xiaozhong, a local traffic police official, was quoted by the Beijing Times on Thursday as saying.

"It was foggy when the accident happened," he said. "The vehicle was going too fast and spun out at a turn."

Wang Fangming, a Chinese-language teacher at the victims' school, said the school did not have the money to buy and operate buses for the more than 150 students, who come from six villages.

"We suggested parents stop hiring that three-wheeled vehicle because of safety concerns, and we forbid it from entering campus," Wang said.

"The headmaster even had an argument with one of the victim's parents over that a few days ago."

Beijing Times quoted the former director of the county's education bureau Wang Li as saying, "Most of the 249 rural schools in our county have no vehicle for schoolchildren."

He was one of six education and traffic officials sacked on Tuesday over the accident.

Also fired were Yang Shixin, a township government official in charge of traffic; Luo Shengli, an official of the county's transport bureau; Zhou Pin, a local traffic police officer; Chen Xin, head of Yinguo Primary School; and Chen Shaohua, head of the Songjiang Township Center School.

The local traffic department's record shows the county has 68 registered school vehicles.

"Without funds, what we are able to do is to educate parents to improve safety awareness and try to build more boarding schools, which takes time," Wang said.

The number of students in the county has decreased from 170,000 at its peak to 120,000, due to family-planning policies and urbanization, he said.

Consequently, many village-based schools are closed, and students must go to school far from home, he said.

Education experts warned growing numbers of rural students nationwide are facing dangers as they take illegal vehicles to get to school.

"Traffic accidents have become dire killers of the country's rural students, who rush between home and school every day," Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the Beijing-based 21st Century Education Research Institute, told China Daily on Thursday.

"The root problem is the tight education budgets rather than the safety awareness of victim's parents," he said.

He said government investment in campus security is far from enough, and school vehicles should be included in the budgets of local governments' compulsory education funds.

The Ministry of Public Security on Thursday began a one-month inspection of school bus security in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and other relevant government departments.