Two officials who were disciplined in the tainted milk scandal that sickened hundreds of thousands of children have been reappointed to new posts, sources said yesterday.

Bao Junkai, former deputy director general of the food production supervision department of General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) was among the latest eight senior officials fired or demoted for slack supervision with regard to the Sanlu scam, uncovered last September. At least six infants died and almost 300,000 fell ill after consuming tainted milk.

Liu Daqun, former director of the agricultural department in Hebei province, where the dairy at the center of the contamination was based, is now the mayor and deputy party secretary of Xingtai, a city in Hebei, the Beijing News reported yesterday. Li was also severely reprimanded in March.