Yang Dongliang, director of the State Administration of Work Safety, answers questions at the press conference, March 10, 2015, in Beijing. [Photo/Xinhua]

Li Hongzhong, Party chief of Central China's Hubei province, tried to contact Wu Bitian, bureau chief of work safety of Hong'an county, over the phone on Dec 31, without success. And Wu did not call back until other officials told him it was Li who had actually called him. If this is what a senior official encounters while trying to contact the bureau chief, one can imagine what an ordinary citizen could face, says an opinion article in China Youth Daily:

Many have tried to defend Wu, saying that since he receives very few calls from senior officials, he mistook the one on Dec 31 to be a prank and didn't bother to answer it or call back. This may be true, but it also shows senior officials call their subordinates so rarely that the latter don't believe it when they actually do so.

Other reports say Wu is rather careless with his work. Asked about the safety of workers and enterprises in his county, Wu is reported to have said that a mining company has safety loopholes but the work safety bureau didn't do anything about it because the company was facing financial problems. It seems Wu cares more about companies making profits than the safety of workers and residents.

It is such mentality of officials that lead to accidents. When enterprises fail to take effective measures to ensure safety in workplaces, government departments are obliged to notify them about the negligence. In particular, for companies engaged in mining and other risky businesses, officials' carelessness could lead to major disasters and loss of innocent lives. We hope safety bureaus nationwide would sincerely perform their duties.

(China Daily 01/04/2016 page8)