Wasteful municipal construction should be curbed

The authorities should stop repeated construction that wastes taxpayers' money, says an article in Beijing Youth Daily. Excerpts:

A 1.2-kilometer long green belt that cost more than 700,000 yuan ($113,890) in Nanjing has been destroyed only one year after it was built.

Related authorities said that their new municipal planning overlapped with the former one, and the green belt would be replaced by a new "high-class" green belt. Such short-lived municipal construction can be seen everywhere, and "new municipal planning" is always used as an excuse to waste taxpayers' money.

There are huge interests behind this duplicated construction: every round of officials wants to make political achievements through municipal construction, while some officials and builders want to make profits, some of which are illegal, from this construction. But few of these officials have been punished for their waste of taxpayers' money.

The related authorities should strictly supervise the use of public funds and seriously punished officials' malfeasance, in order to avoid such things from happening again.