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Opinion
Print Edition> Opinion
UPDATED: November 21, 2011 NO. 47 NOVEMBER 24, 2011
OPINION
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AFFORDABLE HOUSING: In October, 85,000 affordable houses were completed ahead of time in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province (XINHUA)

Mental Health

A government-subsidized counseling center for teenagers has recently been established in Quanzhou, southeast China's Fujian Province. In the center, volunteer psychologists offer totally free services to teenagers and young adults. More similar agencies are needed in China because counseling services are expensive and not easily available.

Since China's society is undergoing rapid changes, teenagers, who generally have stronger personalities compared with their parents' generation, are prone to mental issues like depression and paranoia. Meanwhile, young people's mental health has often been ignored since teachers and parents tend to pay more attention to their intellectual development. A recent survey carried out in Tianjin Municipality among 1.6 million teenagers and young adults reveals that around 13 percent of them have mental problems.

Tragedies caused by mental crises, such as suicides, have taken away many young lives, especially in large factories or university campuses, where a large number of young people live together.

China does not have enough certified counselors. Psychological counseling is usually priced at between 100 yuan ($15.9) and 500 yuan ($79.4) for a session of 50 minutes. Therefore, long-term therapy is unaffordable to students and young people early in their careers, which means they could miss the best opportunity to save themselves from crises.

We should encourage organizations and agencies to provide more free counseling services, which will help the young generation to grow up healthily.

Workers' Daily

Food Safety

Ninety percent of food tested has passed safety inspection, said Pu Changcheng, Vice Minister of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

The high rate may be true but obviously does not match the public's feeling, because the three food safety measurement factors adopted in China, on which the qualification standard is supposed to be based—national standards, testing techniques and safety monitoring—can hardly satisfy the masses.

Some transnational companies' practices are amplifying the defects of China's current food safety standards. For instance, in 2009, Nestle's infant cereal was found to contain genetically modified (GM) ingredients, but China's laws and regulations can do nothing about it, because China's legal regulations do not require food companies to provide GM information on infant cereal packages.If the rules used to measure food safety are deficient, that is, when there is a low threshold for food safety, naturally, there will be high approval rate.

The bigger worry is that food safety testing techniques and equipment in China always lag behind. Take "gutter oil," or inedible oil, as a typical example, it seems immune to any of China's current food safety tests. Of China's existing 2,200 food additives, only a quarter are subject to inspection standards.

As for food safety monitoring, too many incidents are disclosed by the media or ordinary netizens, instead of by official watchdogs. The loopholes in the monitoring networks make food qualification rates even harder to believe.

Guangzhou Daily

Government Purchase

It was recently disclosed that some administrative departments of central China's Hunan Province played tricks in purchasing office facilities. A purchase that could have been made at 15 million yuan ($2.3 million) finally was made at 30 million yuan ($4.6 million). The department involved claims that if this year's budget is too low, these departments may not be able to apply for too much budget allocation next year.

These words clearly explain why purchase prices offered by government departments to suppliers are always higher than market prices.

According to China's financial budget system, next year's budget allocation is based on this year's expenses, which means, if you can't spend all of the budget this year, you might receive a lower budget allocation next year. Thus, how to spend the remaining funds of the current budget at the end of the year becomes a "big task" for many government departments.

Due to this "negative encouragement," more and more government departments become extravagant. Therefore, only by replacing this negative process with a positive tool can we see more frugal government agencies.

The practice of Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, may serve as a good solution. The government sets up a purchase platform on its website, two or more suppliers that intend to bid for the program then compete in terms of the price. Then relevant experts come to check the suppliers' goods. If the goods are ok, the department will sign a contract with the supplier, but the payment is not offered by the office itself, but by the local financial bureau. In that case, purchase prices will drop.

Guangzhou Daily

Affordable Housing

In March the State Council of China announced an ambitious national drive to build affordable housing for low- and middle-income groups. This year will see the beginning of construction on 10 million new units. However, it has been recently reported that one third of the affordable housing projects being constructed are still at the stage of digging pits.

In response to reports questioning the progress of this campaign, officials from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development told the media that "beginning of construction" means that the buildings should at least have their foundations being built while projects whose pits are being dug or temporary enclosures being built should not be counted.

Understandably, we cannot demand that all of the 10 million new apartments be completed by the end of this year. However, instead of constantly monitoring whether the projects, foundations or walls have been built, the ministry should give a clear completion deadline for all the affordable housing projects. The ministry should also promulgate regulations on the punishments for the officials in areas that fail to finish their targets of affordable housing construction by the deadline. Only these measures can motivate local officials to effectively solve housing difficulties for disadvantaged groups by better managing their time and budget.

Dazhong Daily



 
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