Discipline authority sees jump in petitions

The city's disciplinary authority received 30 percent more petition reports in 2013 than in the previous year, local media reported Thursday.

Of the 30,515 petition reports authorities received last year, they found 837 potential cases of wrongdoing, according to a report published in the Laodong Daily.

The petition reports were primarily about problems related to government officials, the report said.

The number of reports about government division heads was up 40 percent from the previous year.

The number of reports about staff in the legal and political systems increased by 43 percent over the same period, the report said.

There was also a 7-percent rise in the number of reports about officials at the department head or bureau level, the report said.

Petition reports have been an important source of clues to uncovering rule or law violations, said Zhang Shiming, deputy director of the Committee for Social and Legal Affairs of the Shanghai Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

Zhang said the authority should immediately investigate every report with a hint of corruption or misappropriation of public funds, according to the report.