Local officials embezzle, misuse budgets
China's Ministry of Finance (MOF) said on Monday special funds for controlling air pollution have been misused by some local governments.
Results from the MOF's inspection have singled out local governments, including those from East China's Anhui Province, North China's Tianjin, and Central China's Henan Province, pointing out that the special environmental protection funds were used to cover other costs or even wasted.
The central government allocated 5 billion yuan ($0.72 billion), 9.8 billion yuan and 10.6 billion yuan in 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively, for curbing air pollution, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday.
The MOF conducted an inspection in May to find out how the special funds had been used in nine provinces and municipalities, including Beijing, Anhui, Henan and North China's Shanxi provinces.
A total of 219 million yuan was found to be used by county governments in Anhui for expenses unrelated to the ban on straw burning, including salaries and bonuses. Another 2.57 million yuan was spent in Anhui on renovating buildings, receiving guests and purchasing devices that had nothing to do with environmental protection.
In Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, the city urban administration purchased 186 waste-compacting vehicles in 2015, but 25 of the 186 allocated to the city's Zhongyuan district were found to be incompatible with its existing system, worth 7.62 million yuan.
"Efforts to curb air pollution have been compromised after the misuse of the special funds," Luo Jianhua, secretary-general of the China Environment Service Industry Association of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, told the Global Times, and called for immediate punitive measures.
The MOF said it will move to recover the funds, and urged the local governments to rectify their mistakes.
"Recovering the misused funds is not enough. Those in charge should also be held liable, and in serious circumstances for criminal liability," Wang Canfa, a professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, told the Global Times.
"Governments at all levels should be transparent in spending special funds for environmental protection, and invite the public to supervise," Wang said.
Local governments in China consistently have to deal with fighting smog. On December 1, the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress issued a draft on meteorological disaster prevention and control, listing smog as a meteorological disaster.
Many scholars have questioned the draft, arguing that unlike other meteorological disasters, smog is essentially air pollution caused by human activity, and the article will likely serve as an escape clause for polluters, the Legal Daily reported.
To avoid misguiding people, the draft should single out smog that can be avoided by reducing pollutant discharges, Wang Gengchen, a research fellow at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times.
