The whole network has been opened to protect rights and carry plagiarism reports
In the countryside of Hunan in May, the rice fields are green, the farmers in the fields are busy preparing for spring ploughing, and the children are playing on the playground in twos and threes during the recess of the primary school in the distance, and everything seems to be peaceful. Beneath this calm surface, however, an earth-shattering corruption scandal is quietly unfolding.
When the National Audit Office audited the funds for the subsidy for nutritious meals for rural students in some provinces, it revealed a shocking fact - 66 county-level governments have overstated the number of students eating meals in the past two years in order to reduce the budget expenditure for the subsidized meals. The money saved was not used to improve the conditions of the canteen and improve the quality of food, but was directly diverted to repay the government debt.
From 2021 to the first half of 2023 alone, nearly 2 billion yuan of subsidy funds for nutritious meals for rural students were misappropriated. What does this mean behind this? This means that in the past two years, every hard-won lunch of rural children has become a matter of necessity under the run on funds.
In order to save costs, the cooks and sisters had to be stingy with every grain of rice and every piece of tofu; The high-quality protein that was supposed to be supplied to children has been damaged by local governments that are eager to repay their debts. The people were indignantly asked, why should their children's food rations be sacrificed under such tight financial pressures?
Why should rural schoolchildren, who should be treated equally, suffer the consequences of resource inequality again? This not only touches the moral bottom line of ordinary people, but also directly exposes the serious anomie of local governments in financial management and people's livelihood investment. The misappropriation of funds is only the tip of the iceberg.
Further investigation found that some counties and cities even colluded with food suppliers to withhold funds through kickbacks and other means, which caused concern about the quality of food supply, seriously harming children's health rights. All kinds of signs show that there are multiple hidden dangers such as lack of supervision and non-standard operation in the current work of nutritious meals for rural students, which need to be fundamentally solved.
Since the incident, although some counties and cities have taken the initiative to return the misappropriated funds, there are still many unresolved problems. Are there more similar cases across the country? Will local governments continue to squeeze out investment in people's livelihood? Why have regulators not been able to detect the problem for so long?
Behind all these questions, there are many difficulties faced by rural education in mainland China. A simple refund of fines is far from curing the root cause of this long-standing problem. We must resolutely stop any form of misappropriation of funds for people's livelihood. This is not only about fiscal discipline, but also about the government's moral bottom line. Officials who abuse their power and fail to supervise must be held accountable and will not be tolerated.
It is necessary to further straighten out the fiscal relationship between the central and local governments, avoid local governments from relying excessively on land financing, and reduce the pressure on debt repayment. It is necessary to improve the mechanism for ensuring the fairness of rural education, and resolutely safeguard the basic rights and interests of every child through financial protection and supervision at the national level. Solving this problem requires the joint efforts of governments at all levels, regulatory authorities and the public.
But what is more needed is that each of us should always be vigilant and strictly supervise any behavior that may harm the interests of children. Because they are the most vulnerable group in this society and the hope for the future of the nation. This is not only system building, but also the bottom line of social morality. Let's work together to protect every bit of peace and happiness of children's growth.