中國網站品牌欄目（頻道）
Changes should be made to the Government Organization Act so the roles of government officials are better regulated, experts said yesterday after it emerged that the small city of Dexing, Jiangxi province, had a staggering 10 vice-mayors.
The 10 vice-mayors were on the payroll of the county-level city despite the fact that it has a population of only 310,000.
The top-heavy bureaucracy was exposed online by outraged netizens who said the local government was wasting taxpayers' money.
Nine vice-mayors were still listed on the website yesterday. Two of them were classified as being temporary positions. Local officials told China Daily yesterday another vice-mayor has just finished a training program and left the position last month.
"Obviously, the city government did not perform its role to provide clear information about officials," said Liu Chun, vice-president of the graduate school at the Party School of the Central Committee of Communist Party of China (CPC).
"The public has a right to know who government officials are and what they do," said Liu.
"The underperformance in notifying citizens about top officials' identities will probably lead to misunderstanding or even anger among the public."
Liu said a city government typically should have one mayor and four vice-mayors. But officials at the Dexing municipality said they usually have six vice-mayors.
For consistency, the Government Organization Act should be updated to clearly stipulate how many vice directors should be allowed in various departments, he said.
In 2007, 30 top leaders were illegally appointed and subsequently dismissed in the municipality after the central government verified reports from residents.
Last October, 10 deputy heads in Pingjiang county government were also exposed.
The city is well known for its copper industry and had a GDP of 7 billion yuan ($1.06 billion) in 2008.
Locals said the government in Dexing ought not to have so many vice-mayors and called on the government to be more streamlined.
"As long as the government uses money appropriately in areas such as education and industrial development, the tax we pay will not be wasted," said one anonymous 46-year-old.
（中國日報網英語點津 Helen 編輯）
About the broadcaster:
Guanny Liu is a freelance journalist from New Zealand. Born in North-Eastern China, she moved to Auckland with her family at the age of eight. Guanny has a Bachelor of Communications Studies from the Auckland University of Technology, majoring in journalism. Before coming to the China Daily website, Guanny was a journalist for the New Zealand state broadcaster, Radio New Zealand. She is in Beijing on an Asia New Zealand grant working as a copy editor for the English news department.
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