(Ecns.cn)-- When he noticed that the charity school built with his donated money had turned into a leather factory, in Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong Province, Wu Kangmin felt hurt and outraged.
Wu, a former deputy of the People's Congress from Hong Kong, the local legislative body, then questioned whether the local governmental officials were making profits from the leather factory, says the Southern Metropolis Daily on July 8.
"I donated all my savings to set up the school, why didn't they inform me about the transition?" complained Wu, on the popular newspaper located in Guangzhou.
Earlier this year, Wu paid a third visit to the school built with his money 15 years ago, to find the building had been rented to a leather factory, with an annual rental income of 45,000 yuan ($6,960).
Wei Xianhui, the last principal of the school donated to by Wu Kangmin, told the Southern Metropolis Daily that the school was merged into the town's biggest elementary school in 2006, and the building had been abandoned.
According to local policy, once evacuated, the school building is under custody of the administrative department of the municipal Bureau of Education.
However, in practice, according to Liu Zhonghua, the deputy director of the municipal Education Bureau, the local villages are in charge of the abandoned school.
As for the rental income of the school building, Wei said that 40,000 yuan (about $6,186) would go to the village, and the town elementary school would get the rest for scholarships.
"In previous cases, we had managed to contact the donors and informed them about the shut-down of the school, yet this time, we were not able to find Mr. Wu in time," added Liu. He apologized in the newspaper to Wu, the donor.
However, Wu Kangmin's experience is not an isolated case.
In an earlier report from the China Youth Daily on November 19, 2008, Yang Dapeng, a farmer who helped to build a primary school with all his savings from seven years of hard work, cried when he found the school had been abandoned.
The 21st Century Business Herald reported about incidents last year on July 31, where 53 elementary schools in Changyuan County, Hubei Province, under Project Hope (launched in 1989 by the China Youth Development Foundation to build elementary schools in the rural countryside) had been abandoned. All had been built with money donated by charity groups and individuals.
Regarding such an awkward situation, the China Youth Development Foundation in charge of the Hope Project primary schools, has been trying to explore new patterns to ensure these schools be exclusively used for education. In the new patterns, the local government would share more responsibility in building and maintaining such schools in order to keep them running for at least 15 years, said the 21st Century Business Herald.
According to the Southern Metropolis Daily's report on Friday, the famous Sowers Action charity organization from Hong Kong is planning to conduct a survey on all the Hope Project primary schools built before 2007, to check if they are still operating.
