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Opinion
Print Edition> Opinion
UPDATED: November 28, 2011 NO. 48 DECEMBER 1, 2011
OPINION
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SAFE SCHOOL BUS: Students visit a school bus company in Chongqing Municipality on November 22. Eighty school buses funded by the government will be gradually put onto the roads in the municipality (XINHUA)

School Buses

The school bus crash that killed 64 children in northwest China's Gansu Province has shaken the whole country. Learning from the tragic lesson, some local governments finally decided to change the situation. The local government of Gansu's Qingyang City decided to cancel all government car purchases for 2012 and spend the budget on standard and safe school bus purchases. Meanwhile, southwest China's Chongqing Municipality has recently taken a series of measures to investigate the safety of the municipality's school buses. The first 300 school shuttles made in Chongqing will soon be put onto the roads of three pilot districts and counties.

However, not all local governments see things this way. In some places, many school buses that are used to shuttle between students' homes in faraway villages and to schools have been abolished. For instance, in some areas of Liuzhou, southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, many students have to walk back home, and some students whose home is far away have to spend two hours walking home.

To regulate school bus use and ensure children's safety are great, but while doing so, the methods are also very important. What Liuzhou's education departments have done will surely lower the odds of accidents—since no school buses are running on the roads, naturally there won't be any accidents. The regulation will only help to keep local leaders' official positions, but will do no good to the students and is probably harmful to them.

Beijing Morning Post

Female Labor Rights

China's Legal Affairs Office of the State Council issued a document on female labor rights protection on November 21, stipulating that the 90-day maternity leave will be extended to 14 weeks. Medical expenses and subsidies for child birth or miscarriages must be covered by employers or by maternity insurance.

The new regulation shows China has moved further ahead in terms of female labor rights protection. But the problem is that the regulation is unable to cover all female workers. Many businesses don't bother to ensure female workers' general legal holidays. How can you expect them to extend women's maternity leave? Even if they agree on the extension of the leave, by no means will they fulfill their commitment to wages, let alone reimbursement of their medical expenses.

Some may suggest female workers protect their rights of maternity leave and subsidies through legal and judicial means. But in the current situation, even if they win the lawsuit in this regard, they may lose more rights in other aspects, or even get fired. If businesses are strictly supervised, they may go to the extreme of blocking female employees out of the company.

Thus, there must be effective measures to ensure female workers' legitimate rights. Labor authorities must tighten up supervision on business behavior toward women and stand up to protect their rights in accordance with the law.

Guangzhou Daily

Charity Information

The center on charity and donation under the Ministry of Civil Affairs will launch a charity information service platform, which will be put into use in the first half of next year. The platform will require charity organizations to open their donation information.

A series of scandals related to charity organizations are eating into the credibility of these organizations. The creditability crisis forces these organizations to open donation information. By doing so, the ministry hopes to promote the transparency and progress of China's charity cause.

The Red Cross of China launched a donation information platform in July this year. However, the public found that on the platform, you can find your own donation information, but you have no access to the details of all donations to the organization. Since there are no technical difficulties in publishing details on every single donation, the incomplete information can only encourage people's suspicion. A more open donation information platform, however, could be able to remove people's doubts.

Meanwhile, some charity organizations will easily use blurry accounts to cheat the public. Therefore, it's suggested that a third party independent monitoring agency be set up to trace the source and the destination of various donations. With regard to the coming information platform, it's also very important to ensure its transparency. Only a transparent donation system can encourage people to take part in charity.

Guangming Daily

Toilet Locations

It is reported that Beijing is planning to improve its current public toilet management by sending short messages to inform people of locations of toilets.

The difficulty in finding public toilets is a common problem in many Chinese cities. It is very common to see tourists searching desperately for a public toilet when visiting these cities.

The lack of public toilets is one question, the ineffective use of current toilets adds to the severity of this question. The common practice in China is to set up a signboard or to show toilets on small maps. However, these measures are usually ineffective in guiding people because they are either hard to find or too limited in number.

Poviding toilet guidance information is a much better idea, because almost everyone has a cellphone at hand. Once they enter a service area, people can easily locate a public toilet according to messages they received, and this will make residents and tourists' traveling much more convenient.

The Beijing News



 
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