Slack supervision leads to problems in outsourcing of public services

LOCAL POLICE IN SUZHOU, East China's Jiangsu province, detained the crew of a boat when they tried to dump about 4,000 tons of garbage from Shanghai municipality. Beijing News comments:

Why must the ship carry the garbage to Suzhou, which is more than 100 kilometers away? Reports show that the Shanghai sanitation authorities outsourced their job and did not supervise the contracted companies. In fact, all they asked the agencies to do is to get rid of the garbage.

Without supervision, the contracting agencies naturally opted to dispose of the garbage instead of processing it because that maximizes their profit. Worse, reports show that the contracted company did not do the job itself; it outsourced the job to smaller companies that operate without a license, which is illegal.