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Officials play lottery game with the poor

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-19 08:02

Authorities in Wencheng community in Suining, Sichuan province, recently issued a notice saying that if low-income families "don't buy lotteries, they won't get their subsidies". How can government departments do that? Why, in the first place, should they be selling lotteries? When will such abuse of power stop? An article in Qilu Evening News poses these questions. Excerpts:

Why do low-income families have to buy lotteries? An official explained: The Wencheng civil affairs bureau in Suining signed an agreement with lottery organizers to sell 30 million tickets this year (24 million online and 6 million scratch-off tickets).

And when the bureau realized that it was still far from achieving its target with only a couple of months in the year left, it assigned the "task" to every community and sub-district authority to help it achieve the goal. Hence, some local communities turned to low-income families and announced that low-income families that do not buy lottery tickets will be denied their subsidy.

This is ridiculous. Low-income families live a hand-to-month existence and do not have the money to buy lottery tickets.

Even the lure of becoming rich overnight cannot force them to part with their hard-earned money.

Why did the officials target the low-income families? Their obvious excuse is that buying a 2-yuan lottery ticket won't kill the poor. Isn't the logic weird?

The local government is draining the resources of the poor families, which already lead a very hard life. This raises some questions. Why should government departments sell lottery tickets?

Doesn't that make them salesmen, instead of civil servants? When will such abuse of power be stopped?

(China Daily 11/19/2009 page9)