Absent employees paid by local governments

An official in Shanxi Province was removed from his post on Sunday for abusing his power and arranging a position for his daughter in a government-sponsored institution, where she was paid for five years of "work" while having never worked a day.

Yang Cunhu, Party chief of Jingle county, Shanxi Province, arranged for his daughter, Wang Ye, to "work" at the Shanxi Center for Disease Control and Prevention (SCDP) in Taiyuan, the capital of the province, for five years beginning in 2006, when Wang was admitted to the Shanxi University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

During these five years, Wang received a salary and housing funds from the SCDP totaling about 100,000 yuan ($15,810) but never worked there until she graduated from her University in October last year. The 26-year-old's five-year tuition fees were also paid for by the SCDP, the Beijing-based weekly newspaper Economic Observer reported.

Early this month, after Wang's story was uncovered by the media, the Shanxi Provincial Discipline Inspection Commission & Provincial Supervision Department investigated the case. Over the weekend, guilty personnel and departments including the SCDP were punished, said Xinhua.

National prevalence

Wang is not the only one to profit illegally from China's government-sponsored institutions. In recent years, increasing ghost employee cases have been reported.

The head of a State-owned shop in Jiangsu Province, surnamed Qi, arranged for his 31-year-old son to "work" in the shop beginning in 2006, while most of the shop's employees were laid off during reshuffling in 2003, People's Daily reported on January 11.

A total of 16 former employees of the shop blew the whistle on Qi in the first half of last year. After an investigation, the local discipline inspection commission & supervision department ordered Qi's son to return his salary and social insurance premiums that totaled around 85,000 yuan, the report said.

Li Guo, a daughter of a former head of Wanzhou district in Chongqing Municipality, received about 30,000 yuan in salary from the district government's Beijing office for two years without having worked there.

She was caught and returned her salary to the office in January 2011, the Beijing News reported.

Supervision loopholes

Most ghost employees are found in lower-level government or government-sponsored organizations. But what has been exposed in the media is just the tip of the iceberg.

"Ghost employees are not uncommon in China," Wang Yukai, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance told the Global Times, adding there are many cases featuring falsified resumes and personal information with the assistance of local authorities.

According to experts, government officials abuse their power to arrange jobs for their relatives, which reflects the moral decline of these officials and a lack of supervision over them.

At the government's lower levels, supervision can be loose while officials are more powerful, making it easy for them to abuse loopholes for personal gain, Liu Kaixiang, a professor with Peking University Law School, told the Global Times.

"Without strict supervision, government officials will never stop abusing their power. No one dares to report them for fear of revenge. Gradually, people have gotten used to ghost employees," Liu said. "That's why they are able to profit for so long without being discovered by higher authorities."

For local legal departments, tracking down ghost employees is not an easy job.

"It's difficult to discover them while following normal procedures. Relying on their strong political background, ghost employees are bold and provide fake information," a discipline inspection commission & supervision department employee in Lianjiang, Guangdong Province was quoted by Zhanjiang Daily as saying on January 12.

Sometimes there are so many organizations with ghost employees that it is impossible for the department to check them one by one, the employee said, adding that the public is encouraged to reveal ghost employees.　　

Strengthening punishment

Currently the punishment for ghost employees is to order them to return their salaries, which experts believe to be too lenient.

"Such punishment is not harsh enough to dissuade future ghost employees, and should be stricter as their salaries were paid for by tax payers." Wu Hongwei, a law professor at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times.

The fines should be harsher, and include their salary plus bank interest, and they should be held criminally responsible for their fraudulent actions, Wu said.

All the people involved in providing jobs for ghost employees should be punished for their involvement as well, he added.

"Ghost employees are harmful to our national economy and social equality. Strict punishment and supervision including finance, auditing and filing systems should be established to close loopholes," Wu said.

Punishment should be decided on an individual basis, Qu Xinjiu, a professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, told the Global Times.

Qu stressed streamlining and simplifying local government institutions as a critical step toward reducing the number of ghost employees.

"There are currently so many government institution employees, but only certain groups really do their work. We should remove useless positions and leave no room for ghost employees to hide," Qu said.