Guanlan Pavilion | Why do students’ nutritious meals frequently become “Tang Monk’s meat”?
2024-08-14
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Recently, the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Commission of Dongxing District, Neijiang City, Sichuan Province, while reviewing the case of a local school leader being detained for "nutritious meals", found through in-depth investigation of potential "relationship networks" and specific stakeholders that 33 of the 48 local schools participating in the meal improvement program had won the bid from the same supplier. Through further investigation, they found evidence that the supplier had bribed the principals of other schools. After the case was exposed, it caused an uproar in public opinion.
According to the investigation by the Dongxing District Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision of Neijiang City, He, the Party branch secretary and principal of Tai'an School in Tianjia Town, provided assistance to businessmen in the contracting and funding of school "nutritious lunch" and teaching building construction projects, and illegally accepted a total of 281,000 yuan in property from others. Starting with He, a series of facts about school principals accepting bribes were also uncovered. Under the strong deterrence, 16 people took the initiative to clarify the problems to the Dongxing District Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision, and the relevant cases are being further handled.
In recent years, problems with student nutrition meals have been exposed frequently. In addition to the problem of "eating" by some school principals found this time, according to the negative cases of "nutritious meals" that have been investigated, there are also problems of suppliers passing off inferior products as good ones, cutting corners, and misappropriation of materials in many places.
On August 1, the WeChat public account of the Sichuan Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision, "Clean Sichuan", published an article titled "Repeatedly Extending "Black Hands" to Cause "Nutrition" Loss in Student Meals", which disclosed the details of Mi, a member of the Party Committee and deputy general manager of Guang'an Agricultural Development Group Co., Ltd., who accepted bribes. It is reported that Mi helped two private companies actually controlled by businessman Yang to acquire shares in "Xingchuan Company", which operates the procurement and distribution of food ingredients for more than 200,000 student meals in public schools across the city. In the name of "Xingchuan Company", he frequently extended his "black hands" to student meals, or cheated on the ingredients, or replaced new rice with old rice, meat with vegetables, or asked for kickbacks from suppliers, etc., to make a lot of "benefits" in the purchase and distribution of student meals.
The "State Council's Audit Report on the Implementation of the Central Budget and Other Fiscal Revenues and Expenditure in 2023" shows that the State Council audited the special funds for the Rural Compulsory Education Student Nutrition Improvement Plan from 2021 to August 2023 in 159 counties in 13 provinces and found that the management and use of some subsidy funds were relatively chaotic. The audit found that some special funds were directly misappropriated, with 66 counties using 1.951 billion yuan to repay government debts and grassroots "three guarantees" and other expenditures; some were misappropriated in disguised forms, with 41 counties and 1,533 schools misappropriating 270 million yuan by lowering meal standards and fabricating procurement business; some were colluded and embezzled, with 5 county education departments conspiring with the winning suppliers to embezzle 42.1602 million yuan through supplier dividends and donations for welfare distribution.
Why do students’ nutritious meals frequently become “Tang Monk’s meat”?
The cage of some local systems is not tight. The stable number of diners and fixed menu patterns in school canteens determine that they have a relatively stable profit margin, so many contractors hope to grab this "sweet cake". From this incident, 33 schools are contracted by the same supplier, and the supplier has bribed some principals, indicating that the so-called bidding is very likely to involve secret operations and private transactions. The purpose of open bidding is to improve the service level and catering quality of school canteens in competition, but if the cage of the system is not tight and there are secret operations, it may cause improper transfer of benefits, which will inevitably lead to the loss of "nutrition" in nutritious meals.
To eradicate the relevant chaos, a multi-pronged approach is needed. Cut off all the unjust hands that may reach out to the children's food rations and ensure that every penny of the nutritious meals is spent on the children. This is a responsibility and an obligation. Relevant departments, especially those where problems are found during audits, should severely deal with the relevant personnel suspected of violating discipline, laws and regulations; at the same time, relevant departments should learn from this incident and establish an effective and sound supervision "firewall" for nutritious meals to prevent such incidents from happening again.
(Dazhong News reporter Xiu Congtao)
