(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-04-11 07:02

BEIJING -- The State Council, China's Cabinet, on Thursday issued a plan on the correction of the wrong work style of officials that was detrimental to the interests of the public this year.

According to the plan, the priorities this year for the correction of official wrong activities are to prevent the return of a heavy financial burden for farmers. This has been drastically cut by scrapping agricultural tax and curbing illegal levies on farmers over the past few years.

Efforts would also be made to ensure the safety of public funds regarding social security, housing, poverty eradication and disaster relief.

The public housing fund, established when China reformed its housing system in the 1990s, was designed to help medium- and low-income earners buy houses. Employees were required to contribute 5 to 12 percent of their salaries to the fund, matched by employers. The fund's mortgage loans carry lower rates than commercial mortgages.

Statistics show more than 110 million Chinese residents had been covered by the housing fund through 2007.

The plan stressed that misappropriation, embezzlement, graft and swindling in handling such funds would be seriously dealt with.

This year, the work of correcting the wrong working style would also focus on checking the implementation of the central authorities' macro-economic policy and preferential policies regarding the public's welfare.

Great efforts would be made to prevent wrongdoings that were detrimental to people's interests in the issues of farmers financial load, illegal charges in education and medical and health care, it said.

The plan highlighted the use of an educational supervision system that would regularly audit educational funds, budget, income and expenditure. It pointed out the building of "luxurious campuses" that did not suit local economic and social development would be firmly prevented.

It said governments at all levels should ensure free compulsory schooling in rural areas and grant subsidies to poor students, and that miscellaneous fees should be scrapped.

Statistics show last year local governments abolished 1,632 items of educational fees and handled various arbitrary charging cases involving 410 million yuan (57 million U.S. dollars), with 3,044 people receiving administrative and Party disciplinary punishments.

The plan pointed out the government would continue to correct wrongdoing in the medical sector and drug sales and further promote rural and urban medicare systems. Punishment would also be taken on irregularities in setting commodity prices.

The government would focus more attention on problems in public service sectors and various intermediary organizations that damaged the interest of the public and enterprises.

On Tuesday, a national conference on the correction of wrong work style was held in Hangzhou, capital of the eastern Zhejiang Province.

State Councilor Ma Kai highlighted the importance of correcting the wrong work style, saying it was closely related to the country's reform and development, the people's interests and the anti-corruption campaign.