Ministry of Railways sued over bidding info
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E-mail CRI, January 8, 2013
The Ministry of Railways (MOR) now faces a lawsuit regarding its response over the bidding process for the upgrade of the website hosting its online ticket purchasing system.
Beijing-based lawyer Dong Zhengwei is suing the ministry for violating a citizen's right to be informed and the right of supervision. The case has been accepted by a court in Beijing.
Dong has previously required the ministry to make public the core information for the bidding, including how millions of yuan has been spent on the finished website and will be spent on the upgrade, who the other bidders are, and the details of the bidding document.
The ministry said in an announcement in September that the upgrade project involved an investment of 330 million yuan ($47.73 million). The MOR confirmed that two Beijing-based software companies were both successful bidders and that a total of five qualified companies and institutes submitted bidding documents.
The announcement came after Dong had earlier filed a request for making all the bidding information public.
Dong said he was not satisfied with the ministry's response, which just gave some information that doesn't touch the core issues.
Dong applied to the ministry in October for an administrative reconsideration over the case but the request was turned down by the ministry.
The only online ticket purchase website approved by the ministry, 12306.cn, went live in January 2010. Since then, public criticism of its poor performance has been constant.
The Ministry of Railways has incurred the wrath of the public yet again in September, after its online ticket-purchasing system crashed under the weight of customers seeking to purchase tickets for the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holidays, which began on September 30 and lasted eight days.
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