The headquarters of the Nanjing-Hangzhou (Ninghang) high-speed railway has denied allegations of corruption after substandard steel was found to have been used to build safety barriers along the railway.

All substandard steel will be seized on the spot and scrapped, all completed cement pillars made with the substandard steel bars will be destroyed, and the problematic safety barriers will be rebuilt, an unidentified official from the China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group, the body that manages the project, was quoted as saying by the Nanjing-based Jinling Evening News on Thursday.

The newspaper reported Tuesday that a steel bar processing plant connected to the project was pulling the steel bars longer and thinner than the minimum allowed in order to cut down on costs.

The findings angered the public, who criticized weak quality supervision and suspected corruption during bids for steel bar processors.

"The railway's construction slowed down recently, and quality inspectors failed to launch intense inspections as usual, which caused the loophole," the official explained to the newspaper.

The official also said the group has blacklisted the contractor, Hongye Traffic Facility from Yiyang, Hunan Province, the company responsible for processing the steel bars.

The branch of the group that was in charge of the project has been fined 100,000 yuan ($15,400) and the relevant officials will be penalized, the official said.

According to the report, bars that were 6.5 millimeters (mm) in diameter had been pulled to 5.8 mm, and 8 mm diameter bars were extended to only 6.9 mm. A total of 7.5 tons of steel had been illegally stretched. When the crime was uncovered, a total of 2.2 kilometers of barriers had already been built.

"Over-stretching the steel bars will cause them to become brittle and weak, and less resistant to earthquakes," Fan Zhong, from the China Architecture Design and Research Group, told the Global Times on Thursday.

This is not the first time substandard steel has been discovered in construction projects. In September last year, over 100 processing plants were found to be illegaly pulling steel bars in Xi'an, creating a virtual underground industry, according to the China Business View.

Nine ministries and commissions, including the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine, Ministry of Public Security and State Administration of Industry and Commerce, launched a special campaign last week to regulate the building materials market.

"Once accidents happen, the consequences of using unqualified material will be fatal. But the violators always regard this possibility as remote," Wang Qinghua, a home inspection engineer in Jinan, Shandong Province, told the Global Times on Thursday.