Around China: Local government asks to "borrow" orphans for inspection
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E-mail Xinhua, January 16, 2013
In a Buddhist temple a man asked the abbot if he would lend the local government a dozen orphans ahead of an inspection. The abbot refused the request.
This absurd scenario in south China's Guangdong Province was recorded on video and posted online last week by micro-blogger Xia Chuhui.
Along with the video, Xia wrote that the civil affairs bureau of Rongcheng District, Jieyang City, went to Zifeng Temple to borrow orphans ahead of a check from the provincial government.
The authenticity of the video has been confirmed by an official from the bureau.
In the recording, the man named Huang Jianwei said the district government told its superiors that it had a welfare home for orphans as required by the provincial authorities. However, it actually did not have one.
The district built a welfare center with public donations 17 years ago and it was designed to be used as a shelter for helpless elders and orphans.
However, the building has given way to funeral and interment services, a marriage registry and part of it was even rented out for commercial use, leaving the district's more than 100 orphans either living under the custody of local temples or families. [ Huang Shenghui, office director of Rongcheng civil affairs bureau, said the welfare center was used for other purposes due to a lack of money to complete the needed facilities.
According to the district, it still needs one million yuan (about 160,809 U.S. dollars) to complete the welfare home. A district government report shows that the budgeted fiscal expenditure of the area was 874 million yuan in 2012.
On Monday evening, Rongcheng district government apologized for trying to borrow orphans and announced that the director of its civil affairs bureau Lin Xiangbiao had been dismissed. The office director Huang Shenghui was suspended from duty for further investigation.
Additionally, the local government of Jieyang said the district has asked the funeral and interment services, the marriage registry and commercial users to move out of the welfare house.
The district plans to invest 3 million yuan in establishing a division for children within the facility.
Until then, temples will continue to be needed in looking after children.
The Buddhist abbot of Zifeng Temple, Shi Yaogai, has adopted 54 children. The temple is home to 31 orphans and the rest have been entrusted to nearby families.
Many of the orphans were born with physical disabilities and their ages range from several months to 30 years old.
Shi adopted the first abandoned baby in 1996 but the old man cannot remember how many children he has accepted, "Some children came and left; some came and later died."
Some children were abandoned by their parents, while others were sent to the temple by the local government and hospitals.
Officials with the government and hospitals said that the children would not stay in the temple for long, since the police station would help find families for adoption. However, the adoptive families never showed up, according to Shi.
A volunteer at the temple surnamed Luo said some people would even leave the children at the door at night even though they had been rejected by the abbot in the day.
For the past 12 years, abbot Shi refused to accept any government support or private donation.
Shi said what the children need the most is not money but constant care.
Luo said Shi underwent surgery for cancer four years ago and worries that the children will be left unattended after he dies.
Zifeng is not the only temple in the city that adopts orphans.
Abbot Shi Yaoyu of Shuangfeng Temple said it has more than 50 orphans.
In 2009, Gushan Temple accepted 11 trafficked babies who had been sent there by policemen.
Jieyang City has about 3,260 orphans with 91 living in welfare homes and 324 in temples and other private institutions. As many as 2,568 children are living by themselves or with their relatives, according to the director of the city's civil affair bureau Yuan Luewen.
Yue Jinglun, professor at Zhongshan University in Guangdong Province, said the incident of trying to borrow orphans reflects the negligence of governments of all levels.
Higher-level governments should have noticed Rongcheng's empty-shell welfare center and ordered it to change. The local government should have invested more in children's welfare, since it was obviously aware of the fact that the local temples were turning into orphanages, said Yue.
The issue of orphanages has been highlighted in China after a fire killed seven people at an unregistered private orphanage in Lankao County, Henan Province on Jan. 4.
There is public anger over the fact that orphans live in hazardous conditions due to insufficient government support.
According to statistics provided by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China has some 615,000 orphans and around 109,000 of them live in government-funded agencies, with the rest being fostered by relatives or private orphanages.
The ministry said that only 64 out of 2,853 counties in the country have child welfare homes and it has pledged to help 500 counties to build child care homes by the end of 2015. Endi
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