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Necessary reduction

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-22 07:48

The Shanghai municipal government's decision to suspend the purchase of new cars for government use until January is a welcome sign of change. It shows that governments at local levels have started paying attention to the problems caused by too many government cars.

Shanghai's move, which came last week, follows actions by local governments in Beijing and elsewhere to reduce the total number of days for the use of government cars.

These moves have obviously been prompted by long-accumulated public complaints about the overuse of government cars. More such cars mean more air pollution, greater wastage of public resources and also corruption among government officials.

It is estimated that the total number of government cars is 4 million and the cost for their use should be around 300 billion yuan ($43 billion) every year.

What is more important than curbing spending is that governments at all levels need to be aware that the fewer cars they use, the more energy they save and the less they contribute to air pollution. Also, a frugal use of cars will help them present a better image of themselves to the general public.

The sealing of 490,000 government cars, nearly 80 percent of them in the capital, during the Beijing summit of China-Africa Cooperation Forum in 2006 did not affect the normal operations of the municipal government. This is solid evidence that quite a large percentage of government vehicles are actually redundant.

The country's urgency for sustainable development has made it an imperative to save energy and reduce the discharge of pollutants. It is therefore necessary for governments at all levels to take the lead in reducing the number of cars and cut their maintenance cost.

The country's 11th Five-Year-Plan (2006-10) has set the goals of reducing energy intensity by 20 percent and discharge of major pollutants by 10 percent. Such targets should apply to government departments as well. The use of luxurious limousines by government officials, uses of government vehicles for private purposes and keeping too many of them running all contribute to the waste of energy and air pollution.

In spite of increasingly resonant calls for reform on the use of government cars, the action in this regard remains slow and reluctant. Apparently, it is hard for many civil servants to give up such privileges. And this is why the reform remains a slow starter.

The actions that some local governments have now taken to reduce the frequency of use of their cars will certainly help. But they are definitely not a final solution to the problems.

These should be only a prelude to realistic reforms of the ways government cars are used. We need transparent policies clearly stating how many cars a government can keep, how much money is to be spent in keeping them and how they are used.

In short, the reform should set guidelines for all governments to follow.

(China Daily 10/22/2008 page8)