China's State Council, or cabinet, issued a circular yesterday to tighten
management on donated quake relief material and fund, asking the audit offices,
supervision departments and media to watch over malpractice.
It asked the audit offices and fiscal departments to track how the government
departments and non-governmental organizations handled the donation and
publicize the results regularly.
The supervision departments would inspect the government's management on
donations and severely punish the offenders while the media are encouraged to
keep a close eye on any malpractice and report their findings, the circular
said.
The police and judicial departments would crack down upon fraud in name of
collecting donations for quake relief, it added.
As of Saturday noon, China has received donations worth of about 40.1 billion
yuan (5.81 billion U.S. dollars) from domestic and overseas donors.
How to well manage such a huge sum of money and let it really benefit victims
has been commonly talked about by the media and ordinary Chinese citizens.
China's Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate had vowed
to crack down upon corruption in quake relief earlier this month.
He Guoqiang, China's top anti-graft official of the Communist Party of China
(CPC), also warned on Wednesday of "quick, strict and harsh penalties" on those
found withholding or embezzling quake relief funds and supplies.
The cabinet circular listed four principles for donation management. Donation
should be made voluntarily rather than compulsorily; organizations should
respect donors' will in using the donations; donations should go to the exact
needs of quake relief and rehabilitation, especially to hard-hit areas;
governments and organizations should follow a legal and standardized way to
distribute donations and publicize the results timely.
It defined what organizations were in place to receive donations. The civil
affairs departments would receive donations in name of the government and other
departments could collect donations from their own staff.
Public offering foundations whose duties include disaster relief, such as Red
Cross Society of China (RCSC), could raise donations from the public. Other
non-governmental organizations are required to pass over donations they raised
to the government or qualified public offering foundations.
Any department and organization should follow the law on donations for public
welfare to set up strict management on donated fund and material and write legal
invoices for donors, according to the circular.
It also urged local governments to improve efficiency in distributing relief
fund and material and avoid misuse and waste.
The civil affairs departments were banned to include operation cost in
expenditure of donated fund and it would be covered by the government budget.
Public offering foundations were required to minimize their operation expense
and report the expenditure to the public, the circular said.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs would be in charge of publicizing nationwide
donations management reports. Local governments and public foundations are
required to give regular and detailed report on how much they received and how
to use them, it said.
Now the ministry makes daily report on the amount of donations received and
forwarded to the quake areas. The RCSC also released the detailed list of
donated fund and material on its website.