Village boss put son’s family on poverty list
Print Edition
A VILLAGE Party chief sneaked his son’s family on to a list of households entitled to poverty relief funds thinking the anti-corruption watchdog would never find out.
But he was wrong.
A cluster of new databases set up earlier this year by disciplinary authorities in Shiyan, a city in central China’s Hubei Province, put paid to Peng Qiongxian’s underhand behavior.
Analysts also found that three other “poverty-stricken households” in Yueriwan, Peng’s village, had used fake documents to obtain the status.
“Lax supervision prevents good policies from benefiting those in need,” said Hu Chaowen, head of Shiyan’s discipline inspection commission.
China’s goal is to lift 55.75 million rural residents out of poverty by 2020. To achieve this, public money has been allocated for living allowances, medical aid and house renovation.
A five-year campaign to eliminate corruption in poverty relief was launched this year to address the growing number of officials implicated in the misuse or embezzlement of funds.
Prosecutors investigated 658 officials responsible for poverty alleviation in the first five months, an increase of 53.7 percent compared to the same period in 2015, according to statistics from the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.
Its investigations revealed that local-level officials were most likely to be involved in bribery, embezzlement, speculation and dereliction of duty.
The databases hold information on those responsible for poverty relief funds since 2014 and their background information, including their family details, as well as house and vehicle ownership. Previously, data was neither unified nor available to all government agencies.
The databases allow disciplinary staff to check whether funds were assigned to qualified receivers. There are also regulations in place that ban the relatives of government workers, or those who own a house in the city or a car, from being classed as “those in need.”
So far, the databases have helped uncover thousands of violations.
In Shiyan, the village committee returned more than 6,000 yuan (US$870) in embezzled funds, which should have gone to villagers, to state coffers.
Following in the footsteps of Shiyan, other regions in Hubei have rolled out systems to supervise poverty relief funds.
“Big data helps us find a way to strictly govern the Party, as our top leadership requires us to do,” Hu said.
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