Media question authorities' report on spending of multimillion-yuan trust
Authorities of Southwest China's Guizhou Province and the city of Bijie face charges of not publicly disclosing audit information on their fund for left-behind children, which is allegedly worth up to 180 million yuan ($27.3 million).
Zhou Xiaoyun, a former investigative reporter and plaintiff in the case against Guizhou and Bijie authorities, told the Global Times on Wednesday that the Intermediate People's Court of Guiyang, Guizhou's capital, accepted his lawsuit on Tuesday.
Zhou first filed suit against the Bijie and Guizhou governments on December 16, 2015 after the city turned down his request to disclose information regarding the fund set up in 2012 to help left-behind children, those left alone or in the care of elderly relatives in the countryside while their parents move to cities to work.
"It is very clear that they should make the fund's audit information public. If there is no such information available, that would be a blatant violation of the Audit Law. It is also against the government regulations on information disclosure," Zhou said.
In 2012, poverty-stricken Bijie vowed to appropriate 60 million yuan every year to set up a fund to help left-behind children after five street children died from carbon monoxide poisoning while burning charcoal for warmth in a roadside dumpster in the city, China National Radio reported.
Zhou said he applied twice for the disclosure of information regarding the multimillion-yuan fund after June 2015, when four left-behind children in one family - aged 5 to 13 - died after drinking pesticide at their home in a village in Bijie. "However, the officials have only given irrelevant responses," he said.
Authorities in Bijie and Guizhou could not be reached for comment as of press time.
Information disclosed on the Bijie financial bureau's website in July 2015 said the fund received over 177 million yuan between 2013 and 2015. Some 11.6 million yuan was reportedly used for welfare payments or for supplies in 2013 and 2014, while over 47.4 million was spent on improving children's living conditions. No further details were provided.
"I need more details about where the money goes and why there is still a high frequency of such offenses," Zhou noted.
Several media organizations, including ifeng.com and Netease, have also questioned how and where the fund has been spent.
Media coverage recorded a number of crimes victimizing left-behind children in the city in 2015.
Two teenage left-behind siblings were murdered in a village in Bijie in August while their father and elder sister were not at home, the Xinhua News Agency reported. A primary school principal reportedly sexually assaulted six left-behind girls in May.
China is home to more than 60 million children left behind in rural areas, often with their grandparents. According to a 2013 report released by the All-China Women's Federation, nearly 3.4 percent of these children live alone. Those children fall easy victims to such tragedies as murder, human trafficking and suicide, Xinhua said.
