(Ecns.cn) -- Originally intended to lift people out of destitution, poverty relief has ended up going to the hands of millionaires in Laozhai Village, located in Guangdong Province, while many villagers are still struggling in poverty without help.
Laozhai Village is located in Shaoguan where there are 316 households with 1,459 villagers who live off of rice planting. Last year, the annual per capita income of the village was only 400 yuan ($61.8). For many years, it has been listed as one of the 3,049 impoverished villages of Guangdong Province.
In late September 2010, the Laozhai Village Committee distributed 200 Silkie chickens to 20 households. Then in early December 2010, the committee handed out 100 bags of rice formula fertilizer to some of the villagers. However, when some villagers asked the committee to disclose a list of poverty alleviation targets, the village leaders declined to do so.
On March 11, 2011, Ye Zhonghui climbed over the iron gate of the village committee and stole the list of poverty-stricken families of Laozhai Village. The list made villagers fly into a towering rage because many of the names on the list should not have been included.
According to a villager, Ye Jingsheng's name was on that list, but he was the richest villager among them, whose assets were more than 1 million yuan ($154,600). In 2010, the millionaire received 40 Silkie chickens as poverty relief.
Similarly, village Party Secretary Ye Yousheng and his wife and six other relatives were also listed as poverty-stricken villagers, but in fact they were living well-off lives at the time.
Some villagers then reported the problem to authorities, but to their surprise, they were given the response that there were no such cases of embezzlement in Laozhao Village and all poverty alleviation work was done in cooperation with the village committee.
The villagers reported the problem to authorities more than 10 times since last year. The list was finally updated in accordance with the current financial status of all villagers in May 2011, and those who did not deserve poverty relief were eliminated from the list.
