Three county officials punished for misappropriating funds

Three government officials from a county of Southwest China's Guizhou province were punished after the county government was found to have misappropriated nearly 500 million yuan ($73.1 million) meant for teachers' salaries, the provincial government said on Sunday.

Chen Ping, head of Dafang county, was suspended. Two deputy county heads responsible for education and finance were removed from their posts.

The delayed salaries will be paid to teachers by Thursday, the government said. Thursday is China's Teacher's Day.

The scandal was discovered by an inspection team of the State Council. It found that starting from 2015 teachers in Dafang county did not get their full salaries each month. The situation continued to August.

More investigation showed 479.61 million yuan meant to pay for teachers' salary were misappropriated. An additional 341.94 million yuan meant to be used as educational funds was also misappropriated.