OPINION> EDITORIALS
|
OPINION> EDITORIALS
|
|
All staff and no work
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-12 07:50
Everybody's business is nobody's business. An overstaffed government department means not only waste of taxpayer's money but also total inefficiency. Worse, some bloated ones turn themselves into profit-making organs to provide payroll for their redundant staff. The environmental protection bureau in Xupu county in central China's Hunan province is such a government department. Its stipulated staff strength is 20, but it has 117. What is ridiculous is that the redundant ones have each paid a deposit of 10,000 yuan ($1,470) or 20,000 yuan for entering this department, and then they get a salary of 1,000 yuan a month. But not anyone can do that; only those with connections in local government. It is reported that four persons were recruited at the behest of local county leaders. As there is not enough work for the redundant workers, many of them do not work at all but remain on the payroll. The allocation from local government funds is far from enough to provide for so many people, then the bureau misappropriates the fees enterprises have paid for discharge of pollutants. The same thing is happening in the city of Pingdingshan, in Central China's Henan province, where more than 600 redundant staff workers in its six county-level environmental protection bureaus are supported by funds taken from the fees paid for the treatment of pollutants. We have enough reason to doubt whether these environmental watchdogs are able to play their role of supervising local enterprises in observing the rules relating to discharge of pollutants. The logic should be: the more fees local polluting enterprises pay, the more money these bureaus will have to provide for staff workers. So instead of strictly controlling the discharge of pollutants, they will quite likely welcome polluters. In that case, how can we expect such local environmental watchdogs to work for a better environment? What is even more shocking is the assertion by the top leader of that environmental protection bureau in Hunan that there is enough reason for the bureau to have so many people. This leader may have forgotten that the law on civil servants has strict stipulations about the recruitment of government employees. By recruiting employees in such a manner, the bureau has violated the law. Moreover, our country's Environmental Protection Law stipulates that no individual or unit has the right to intercept and misappropriate fees enterprises have paid for pollutants discharged, and that the money can only be used to treat pollutants and improve the environment. By misappropriating such fees to support redundant staff workers, these bureaus have broken the stipulation. The taxpayers are paying environmental watchdogs to check polluters and thus make sure that good environment is maintained. If they do otherwise like the bureaus mentioned above, those who are responsible for such serious offenses should be prosecuted and tried. Such abuse of power, if not checked in time, will undermine the legitimacy of local government departments and their credibility. This is no small matter.
(China Daily 08/12/2009 page8) |
