Call for officials to be judged on housing efforts

The quality of the housing occupied by the poor should serve as a vital criterion in evaluating the performance of local government officials, a senior urban construction official said yesterday.

The proposal represents the latest step by the central government to ensure poor urbanites are sheltered from the red-hot property market.

"We have made clear-cut goals (in housing the poor) that are easy to quantify and (to use) to judge local governments," Shen Jianguo, director of the residential property division under the Ministry of Construction, said yesterday.