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Hardworking public servants deserve the best money can buy
By Wan Lixin |
December 31, 2010, Friday
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Print Edition
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WHILE our newly rich compatriots are busy creating sensations overseas by splurging on luxuries, our public servants back home are also taxing the imaginative powers of the public with their fancy government procurement items.
Unlike the nouveau riches who show little inhibition when it comes to flaunting their wealth, our civil servants flush with money prefer to keep a low profile, and their extravagance usually becomes public knowledge by accident, and then it's quickly rationalized as being in the public interest.
One governmental procurement list showed the Department of Public Security in Heilongjiang Province spent more than 41,000 yuan (US$6,200) on a laptop computer. The list also included a 15,200-yuan laptop and a 30,000-yuan printer.
The Department explained on Tuesday that this pricey laptop is necessary for the department to "keep in touch with Interpol," the international police organization.
How flattered will Interpol be when they learn they are being contacted by their Chinese friends via a 41,000 yuan-latop?
More excesses have been exposed online.
On December 15, the Bureau of Finance of Fushun, Liaoning Province, ordered seven iPod Touch 4s at a price of 2,300 yuan each, in a bid to acquire quality flash disks.
As iPods are designed for enjoying music and downloaded movies, their use as flash disks naturally make them the most expensive flash disks ever.
The procurement was suspended to pacify public anger over this use of taxpayers' money. The Funshun finance bureau blamed an office clerk for his incompetence in mistaking a iPod for a flash disk, but other examples suggest this was not an accident. Ironically, a finance bureau is entrusted with the task of scrutinizing government expenditures and budgets.
Officials of the traffic police in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, have planned to buy 21 iPhone 4s. Responding to public queries, local traffic police said that while experimenting with a "police mobile video command and dispatch induction system," they discovered that, as the most sophisticated mobile terminals, iPhone 4s have displayed uniqueness and advanced technology that, for the time being, cannot be replaced by other terminals.
But the depth of public misunderstanding is such that the department chose to temporarily sacrifice their needs for these unique and advanced terminals.
Public misperceptions similarly forced Shuimogou District Court in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, to suspend its planned purchase of two luxury massage chairs that found their way to the court's procurement list.
Local authorities said that the massage chairs are intended to serve veteran cadres.
Officials from district finance bureau also reassured taxpayers that the budget for the two chairs is only 22,000 yuan, not the over 50,000 yuan as rumored.
Lack of oversight
In a recent media interview, lawyer Yan Yiming gave a purely technical explanation of these official extravagances. Yan has repeatedly appealed to the State Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance for greater transparency.
The first reason, he said, is that at year's end governments at all levels are in a rush to spend their annual budget, lest their economy and underspending mean their budget for the next year will be cut.
The second reason is that some local governments are taking advantage of the central government's huge economic stimulus package to enrich themselves. But a more fundamental cause may be that government's capacity for serving renmin (the people) is increasingly replaced by the desire to serve reminbi.
There is growing public dissatisfaction with how our public money is being spent.
To be honest, the above items are still relatively harmless, insignificant luxuries that many officials would be willing to forego if so compelled.
There are more luxury items so dear to the hearts of our public servants that they simply choose not to let the public know, for instance, the cost of their cars, their housing, or how their spouses and children are supported.
Recently some reporters asked some government departments in Beijing about the number of officials cars, and the answer is the figure is "too sensitive" to release.
But we do have some nonsensitive figures available. A survey by the National Bureau of Statistics shows that 83.8 percent of Chinese thought corruption had been reduced in 2010, up from 68.1 percent in 2003.
A tragedy
On December 27, 14 primary school students in Hengnan County, Hunan Province, died after a tricycle-turned-school bus fell into a river.
The parents could only afford their children to be carried in this poor conveyance, yet they as taxpayers managed to see to it that their public servants are chauffeured around in expensive cars.
In a revised decree widely hailed as revolutionary, these stewards of our trust are allowed to be chauffeured around in cars valued from 16,000 to 35,000 yuan, depending on their official rank. The idea is that the more senior officials naturally have more expensive, and polluting, cars.
These prices have already been greatly reduced from those in previous listings - in some cases, the allowable expense for an official car was cut by 100,000 yuan.
Why not set this money aside to transport schoolchildren who have difficulty in accessing free "compulsory" education?
In some countries high-quality school buses are required by law, and enjoy a number of privileges while in operation.
For real change to occur, people must be allowed to have a say in how to spend their money.
Unlike the nouveau riches who show little inhibition when it comes to flaunting their wealth, our civil servants flush with money prefer to keep a low profile, and their extravagance usually becomes public knowledge by accident, and then it's quickly rationalized as being in the public interest.
One governmental procurement list showed the Department of Public Security in Heilongjiang Province spent more than 41,000 yuan (US$6,200) on a laptop computer. The list also included a 15,200-yuan laptop and a 30,000-yuan printer.
The Department explained on Tuesday that this pricey laptop is necessary for the department to "keep in touch with Interpol," the international police organization.
How flattered will Interpol be when they learn they are being contacted by their Chinese friends via a 41,000 yuan-latop?
More excesses have been exposed online.
On December 15, the Bureau of Finance of Fushun, Liaoning Province, ordered seven iPod Touch 4s at a price of 2,300 yuan each, in a bid to acquire quality flash disks.
As iPods are designed for enjoying music and downloaded movies, their use as flash disks naturally make them the most expensive flash disks ever.
The procurement was suspended to pacify public anger over this use of taxpayers' money. The Funshun finance bureau blamed an office clerk for his incompetence in mistaking a iPod for a flash disk, but other examples suggest this was not an accident. Ironically, a finance bureau is entrusted with the task of scrutinizing government expenditures and budgets.
Officials of the traffic police in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, have planned to buy 21 iPhone 4s. Responding to public queries, local traffic police said that while experimenting with a "police mobile video command and dispatch induction system," they discovered that, as the most sophisticated mobile terminals, iPhone 4s have displayed uniqueness and advanced technology that, for the time being, cannot be replaced by other terminals.
But the depth of public misunderstanding is such that the department chose to temporarily sacrifice their needs for these unique and advanced terminals.
Public misperceptions similarly forced Shuimogou District Court in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, to suspend its planned purchase of two luxury massage chairs that found their way to the court's procurement list.
Local authorities said that the massage chairs are intended to serve veteran cadres.
Officials from district finance bureau also reassured taxpayers that the budget for the two chairs is only 22,000 yuan, not the over 50,000 yuan as rumored.
Lack of oversight
In a recent media interview, lawyer Yan Yiming gave a purely technical explanation of these official extravagances. Yan has repeatedly appealed to the State Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance for greater transparency.
The first reason, he said, is that at year's end governments at all levels are in a rush to spend their annual budget, lest their economy and underspending mean their budget for the next year will be cut.
The second reason is that some local governments are taking advantage of the central government's huge economic stimulus package to enrich themselves. But a more fundamental cause may be that government's capacity for serving renmin (the people) is increasingly replaced by the desire to serve reminbi.
There is growing public dissatisfaction with how our public money is being spent.
To be honest, the above items are still relatively harmless, insignificant luxuries that many officials would be willing to forego if so compelled.
There are more luxury items so dear to the hearts of our public servants that they simply choose not to let the public know, for instance, the cost of their cars, their housing, or how their spouses and children are supported.
Recently some reporters asked some government departments in Beijing about the number of officials cars, and the answer is the figure is "too sensitive" to release.
But we do have some nonsensitive figures available. A survey by the National Bureau of Statistics shows that 83.8 percent of Chinese thought corruption had been reduced in 2010, up from 68.1 percent in 2003.
A tragedy
On December 27, 14 primary school students in Hengnan County, Hunan Province, died after a tricycle-turned-school bus fell into a river.
The parents could only afford their children to be carried in this poor conveyance, yet they as taxpayers managed to see to it that their public servants are chauffeured around in expensive cars.
In a revised decree widely hailed as revolutionary, these stewards of our trust are allowed to be chauffeured around in cars valued from 16,000 to 35,000 yuan, depending on their official rank. The idea is that the more senior officials naturally have more expensive, and polluting, cars.
These prices have already been greatly reduced from those in previous listings - in some cases, the allowable expense for an official car was cut by 100,000 yuan.
Why not set this money aside to transport schoolchildren who have difficulty in accessing free "compulsory" education?
In some countries high-quality school buses are required by law, and enjoy a number of privileges while in operation.
For real change to occur, people must be allowed to have a say in how to spend their money.
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