WRIC Yao Cheng                              March 8th, 2011

Over three months that the activity of WRIC is carried out in Feixi County, Anhui Province, it has been extended to four towns of Gaoliu, Gaodian, Gaoting and Mingchuan. On March 7th, WRIC volunteers came to Jinqiao Village, Guanting Town, which borders with Lu’an, to grant subsidies to female infants and pregnant women.

Jinqiao Village is located at the edge of Dabie Mountain., through which the Pihe River excavated artificially in 1950 s passes.  It is in hilly area. Jinqiao Village, with more than 2800 people, is the poorest village in Feixi County. The villagers here live disperse. When we first came here, we couldn’t find a suitable place to distribute subsidies.  So we chose village’s center, the village committee.

Helped baby girl of WRIC’s The Rural Baby Girl Assistance. (Program. Photo by Yao Cheng)

Because we informed them by telephone in advance, more than a dozen recipients of subsidies came here early. When they got the subsidies from our volunteers, they thought we were from the Family Planning Office of village. We explained that this was the money donated by some American non-profit organizations and benevolent people for the protection of baby girls. They told us that the Family Planning Office also has registered the data of baby girls and government would give them subsidies. But no one had received it. This made the village officers present very embarrassed.

There are neither good mountains nor farmlands. In order to maintain their livelihoods, most young and middle-aged people can only go out  to work and do some hard work in the city. But they cannot earn much money. Family planning officer didn’t distribute subsidies for a long time. So it is very welcome for us to pay them money. Therefore, when I proposed to look the situation of the birth of infants, she also provided information actively and introduced the relevant situations.

The specialist cadres told us there are nine children were born in this village, seven boys and two girls. There is a big gap between genders. The work of family planning is more and more difficult to ddo. Almost of them are pregnant when working outside.  Why are there so many boys and little girls? She didn’t know either. The situation of pregnancy cannot be accurately mastered. When we were distributing subsidies, a villager asked if we could give some subsidies to a legs-disabled woman. She had a disability certificate but could not get the disability allowance.  I immediately called a disabled friend in Hefei. He told me clearly that as long as she had a disability certificate, the government would definitely have subsidy for her. The reason why she didn’t receive it was probably that the village withheld it. I asked the specialist about it. She answered that she couldn’t receive both minimum living allowance and disability allowance.

Since I started the girl assistance program, I have visited many village committees. I have always been unclear about the sources of funds of village cadres for organizing tourism and drinking. The village does not belong to the first-level government departments. It should be said their funds are limited. The minimum living allowances are also allocated according to proportion of the population. Such as that disabled person, she occupies a quota of minimum living allowance. Then the village can withhold her disability allowance. In fact, she can receive disability allowance and give her minimum living allowance to another family. However, the village took her disability allowance as the funding of the village committee. In addition, I believe the government must have allocated the subsidies for families with girls. I have read the registration form, which is complete. Because the villagers are honest, they dare not ask for village cadres every day, or the cadres excuse them that the subsidies are not ready. Then it will be end with nothing.

Corruption of village cadres is a very serious problem in China, not only in Wukan, but also in almost all village committees throughout the country. The poorer the village, the more serious it is.