Official refutes accusations of car abuse

An attempt by a publicity official in Yunnan Province to promote transparency has backfired after media reports used the information he voluntarily released to accuse him of violating regulations relating to official vehicles.On Friday, he refuted the claims.

Wu Hao, 42, the director of the publicity department in the Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, revealed last week the plate number of the government car he uses through a Sina Weibo account which is now run by his department.

While hailing the move, the Beijing Youth Daily on Thursday commented on the official's behavior in a report, which said that officials at Wu's level should not be given a government car.

The report said the vehicle is for Wu's exclusive use, which is against a 1994 regulation stipulating that only provincial governors, heads of ministries or officials of higher rankings are allowed their own government cars.

Wu rejected the accusations by saying the vehicle was not exclusive to certain officials but to everyone depending on "work requirements."

Wu said the regulation issued in 2011 "never specifically said officials of which level could be assigned government cars."

He also demanded the Beijing Youth Daily delete the report.

However, Wu deleted his comments refuting the claims on Friday and he could not be reached by press time.

Despite the dispute, Jiang Hong, a professor from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) , said Wu's efforts to reveal this information could promote crackdowns on the abuse of officials' cars, an issue that has long angered the public.

"The root cause of this long-term problem is the lack of effective supervision, and Wu's attempt was a feasible method and it should be spread to more government departments," Jiang told the Global Times on Friday.

The Beijing News cited the latest figure on government vehicles from Du Liming, a member of the National Committee of the CPPCC, who said the number exceeded 2 million by the beginning of 2011, with an annual cost of purchasing and maintaining these vehicles exceeding 150 billion yuan ($24 billion), the Beijing News reported.

The municipality authority in Shanghai for the first time disclosed earlier this yeat that it had cut the fleet of government vehicles by 19.6 percent in 2012 to roughly 6,500.

"Since the regulation on the use of government vehicles was published in 1994, the calls for reforming officials' use of cars have been constant. Although some local authorities have taken measures to deal with the problem, the overall effect has not been satisfactory with the number of government cars still increasing year by year," Zhu Lijia, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance said in the Beijing News report, adding that a nationwide reform is badly needed to sharply reduce the use of government cars.