Fujian Promotes Efficiency Construction in Government Organizations

On July 25, in the Fuzhou Hongsheng Plastics Machinery Factory at the center of Fuzhou City, representatives of Fujian Province, Fuzhou City and concerned departments directly under the provincial government reached a consensus on matters concerning the moving of hazardous articles warehouse of the provincial light industry research institute and the provincial chemical industry research institute existing within the factory, so the problem relating to the major safety hidden danger buried at the center of the city was finally solved after a postponement of seven years.

This reporter, Jiang Baozhang, learned from the office of the leading group for Fujian Province's efficiency construction that since Fujian Province started efficiency construction in government organizations, a number of similar "long-standing, big and difficult" problems concerning buck-passing practice have been resolved.

At the time of marching toward the new century, the Fujian provincial Party committee and provincial government are deeply aware that the efficiency of government offices affects the general situation regarding the reform, development and stability of the province, without fundamentally solving the problem concerning the working style of government departments and without setting up an "honest, industrious, pragmatic and efficient" cadres contingent, it would be impossible to meet the rigorous challenge facing cross-century development and to attain the magnificent goal of Fujian Province's new round of pioneering work.. In March this year, the Fujian provincial Party committee and provincial government, on the basis of summing up the experiences gained by Zhangzhou City in carrying out efficiency construction in government offices, decided to comprehensively unfold efficiency construction in the province's government organizations at and above the township and town levels and in work units with administrative management functions. The perfect systems of job responsibility, service promise, the evaluation of efficiency, the investigation and affixing of responsibility for neglect of duty have been established everywhere in the province and measures have been adopted such as optimizing the allocation of functions, streamlining of administrative structure, the delegation of examination and approval power and working links as well as measures for those winning in a competition to get work posts and those with low work efficiency to wait for jobs, these are supplemented by mechanisms of external supervision and restriction to promote the steady development of efficiency construction in government organizations. Yunxiao County has started the activity to clean up the accumulated unresolved matters, since the beginning of this years, the county authorities have cleared up 315 matters piled up over the years, the County Land Bureau has shortened the time for preparing and issuing of a certificate from two days to one and a half hours. Xiamen City has conducted a comprehensive checkup on local regulations, rules and policy documents, it has done away with 278 kinds of inappropriate documents and revised 268 kinds of documents, striving to fundamentally changed government functions, improve the style of work and raise work efficiency.

In carrying out efficiency construction in government organizations, various regions and departments integrated efficiency construction and making administrative affairs public, set up efficiency suing centers, and inviting efficiency construction supervisors, "whether or not the masses agree, support and feel satisfied" is regarded as the starting-point and end-result of efficiency construction in government organizations. The opening of administrative affairs has helped greatly raise the transparency of office work.

Since the launch of efficiency construction in government offices the suing centers of various localities, cities and government organizations of the province have handled 1,200 cases of complaints against related government departments' efficiency, a batch of long-standing "accumulated unresolved matters" and "difficult matters" have been quickly resolved, government departmental cadres' awareness of the principle of serving the people has notably strengthened, their work efficiency and their level of exercising administration according to law have been obviously raised, the soil and condition for breeding corruption have been weakened and reduced, the province's micro-environment for investment has been optimized. It took the investment project of the Zhangzhou Qianlima (a winged steed) Turbine Co. Ltd. only three days to complete the formalities from reporting for approval to the receiving of license, the foreign businessmen felt very satisfied over this; Changtai County which took the lead to launch efficiency construction attracted US$61.1 million in foreign capital, up 174 percent over the same period of the previous year, and paid-in foreign capital US$21 million, setting a record high and still maintaining a strong momentum, the investors say that they feel at ease when making investment in such an environment.

Accompanying this report are the editor's notes which read in part as follows: The work efficiency, attitude and style of work of the staff members of our Party and government organizations and functional management departments are closely related with the success or failure of our cause. The efforts made by various localities to improve the work efficiency of government organizations have yielded positive results. But it should be admitted that people do not feel the service spirit to be shown by the personnel in quite a few organizations in many localities when they go there to have something done with the staff. This situation does not tally with the principle of serving the people, with the spirit of reform and with the requirements as set in the "three representatives" (representing the advanced productive forces, representing the advanced culture and representing the fundamental interests of the masses). It is suggested that state functionaries come to learn from and draw on Fujian's experiences and build an honest and industrious government and working bodies.

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