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Supervision necessary

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-02-12 07:43

The lack of public supervision leads to the purchase of luxurious cars by governments at different levels, says an article in Guangzhou Daily. The following is an excerpt:

Netizens have recently exposed a list of some 400 cars to be purchased by a district government of Chongqing municipality. Among them are luxury cars such as Audi and Buick. The head of a local water supply and drainage station even said that the Honda CRV car he decided to buy at the price of 239,800 yuan was "not expensive at all".

Compared with luxury car brands Audi and Buick, this price is cheap, but for the general public, it's not cheap at all.

Government cars are purchased with taxpayers' money. It is not those officials but taxpayers who should have the final say in deciding whether the car is expensive or not.

But unfortunately taxpayers are never informed of government car purchases. Taxpayers have no channel to supervise government auto procurements, let alone the rights to decide what kinds of cars governments should buy.

The waste in the use of government cars cannot be curbed unless the supervision by the public is right in place.

(China Daily 02/12/2009 page8)