Hubei Red Cross official fired over donation fiasco

ZHANG Qin, full-time deputy director of the Hubei branch of the Red Cross Society of China, has been removed from office for dereliction of duty in the fight against the ongoing novel coronavirus epidemic, the provincial supervisory commission said yesterday.

Zhang was also dismissed from the leading Party members group of the RCSC Hubei branch committee of the Communist Party of China, and given a serious intra-Party warning as well as a serious administrative demerit, it said.

An investigation showed that relevant officials and cadres with the RCSC Hubei branch failed to take responsibility when receiving and distributing donated funds and relief goods in the effort to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus epidemic. They were also found to have violated relevant regulations and committed information disclosure errors, the commission said in a notice.

Meanwhile, Chen Bo, a member of the leading Party members group of the RCSC Hubei branch committee of the

CPC, was given a serious intraParty warning and a serious administrative demerit. Gao Qin, chief of the RCSC Hubei branch committee of the CPC and also the executive vice director of RCSC Hubei branch, was given an intra-Party warning, according to the notice.

On the same day, three officials in Wuhan, capital of Hubei Province, which is also the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, were punished for violating relevant regulations to distribute face masks, according to the city’s supervisory commission yesterday.

Xia Guohua, a member of the leading Party members group and deputy head of the Wuhan Municipal Bureau of Statistics, has been removed from office. He was also given a serious intra-Party warning as well as a serious administrative demerit.

Meng Wukang, Party chief and director of the Wuhan Municipal Development and Reform Commission, and also the Party chief and head of the Wuhan Municipal Bureau of Statistics, and Huang Zhitong, deputy director of the Wuhan municipal government office, were admonished.

By the end of January, Tang Zhihong, director of the health commission of Huanggang City in Hubei, was removed from her post for she had unshirkable responsibility for problems, including insufficient screening of suspected cases, slow progress of tests and lack of testing personnel. The issues were found by a central government inspection team designated to guide epidemic control work in the city which has been hit hard by the novel coronavirus, according to local authorities.

Huanggang then sacked six officials over poor performance in an effort to prevent and control the epidemic. Three of them were county-level officials and the rest were village or township-level officials, Qiu Lixin, mayor of Huanggang, said at the beginning of this month. Qiu also added that a total of 337 officials in the city had been penalized following inspections over Huanggang’s anti-coronavirus work.

(Xinhua)