From the Chinese Press

The evil of subcontracting jobs

Some regular sanitation workers in Zhengzhou, Henan province, pay elderly rural residents 1,240 yuan ($203) a month to "work" for them as temporary workers and take the rest of the monthly salary of 3,000 yuan without actually doing any work, compelling the authorities to start an investigation into the scandal, says an article in Beijing Times. Excerpts:

Many media outlets have carried reports on sanitation workers in cities, saying their salary is low and their rights and interests are not protected. As a result, the public assumed that the workers referred to in the reports were employed by government departments without suspecting that they were instead "hired" by regular workers to do their work for less than half their salary.