More than 30 million yuan in land requisition compensation for Pengjia Village in Zibo Economic Development Zone, Shandong Province, was used by the local government for "financial management" without the knowledge and consent of most villagers. Faced with a series of questions from the villagers, multiple levels of government departments could not answer them.
Pengjia Village Party Affairs and Village Affairs Open Column (Photo by Reporter Guan Xin)
The 169.383 acres of land expropriated in Pengjia Village are overgrown with weeds (photo by reporter Guan Xin)
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Set up a special class and implement rectification!
The Management Committee of Zibo Economic Development Zone responded that in response to the problems pointed out in the report, the Management Committee of Zibo Economic Development Zone set up a special working group composed of the District Natural Resources and Planning Bureau, the District Urban Investment Company, the District Government Affairs Coordination Department and Fujia Town, etc., to investigate and verify the land expropriation procedures and related expropriation compensation matters in Pengjia Village in accordance with the process and division of responsibilities.
During the inspection, it was found that due to the prominent historical contradictions in Pengjia Village and the imperfect construction of the team, in order to ensure the financial safety of the land compensation money, and at the same time taking into account the preservation and appreciation of the value of the compensation money, the above funds were uniformly managed by the district urban investment. If Pengjia Village has a need for the use of funds in terms of daily expenses such as villagers' welfare, infrastructure construction, and people's livelihood security, as well as reasonable and major expenses, it can apply for use at any time. Therefore, the money is not a substantial investment and wealth management, and there is no capital risk. At the same time, there is indeed the problem that the coverage of the work of informing the masses is not wide enough. In the next step, the local government will hold a villager congress and a party member meeting to inform and explain and publicize it, and at the same time widely solicit the opinions of the villagers, and implement rectification in accordance with the opinions of the majority of the villagers.
The Management Committee of Zibo Economic and Technological Development Zone also said that it will require relevant departments to perform their duties, quickly improve procedures, ensure that funds are in place in accordance with laws and regulations, and use them in strict accordance with fund management procedures to ensure that funds are fully used for village development and villagers' welfare. At the same time, we should comprehensively investigate similar and related problems, put an end to the situation that village-level funds are not managed and used in place, and effectively ensure the vital interests of the people.
The villagers of Pengjia Village jointly signed and pressed the "Letter of Solicitation of Opinions" with handprints (photo by reporter Guan Xin)
CCTV Network Commentary
Land is the means of production for the peasants to live and live, and the land compensation involves the vital interests of the landless peasants and cannot be embezzled or misappropriated in any form. According to the report, the compensation for land requisition in Pengjia Village has been misappropriated for a year, but only now that the villagers' congress has been notified to discuss the distribution plan of the "land-expropriated social pension security fund", and only then have the villagers heard about the land expropriation. Such disorderly actions of the local government have undoubtedly seriously harmed the peasants' most basic right to know.
To protect the interests of farmers, it is first necessary to ensure that farmers have the right to know about matters involving their own interests, and land acquisition and subsequent compensation must also be carried out under the premise of openness and legality. According to the Land Management Law of the Mainland and the Regulations for the Implementation of the Land Management Law, the state may, for the needs of the public interest, expropriate land owned by farmers' collectives as state-owned land through legal procedures, and stipulate a series of statutory processes from the issuance of pre-announcements of land requisition, compensation and resettlement plans, to social stability risk assessment, land expropriation approval, and the issuance of formal land requisition announcements and compensation and resettlement announcements, and many links are interlinked. For example, "the social stability risk assessment shall involve the participation of members of the rural collective economic organizations, village committees and other stakeholders who have been expropriated, and the assessment results shall be an important basis for applying for land expropriation." "If the local government carries out land acquisition in accordance with laws and regulations, it is unlikely that the villagers will not know about it one year after the land acquisition is completed.
The compensation for land acquisition includes four items: land compensation, resettlement subsidy, compensation for ground attachments and seedlings, and social security fees, which should be fully allocated in place and earmarked for special purposes in accordance with the law. As for the specific distribution and use of the compensation money, it is a matter of villagers' autonomy and should be decided by the village collective deliberative body. However, from the Pengjia village committee to the local town government, it is not clear where the money is going, and "there are similar situations in the compensation for land acquisition in other villages", which not only infringes on the vital interests of the land-expropriated farmers and their right to self-government as members of the village collective, but also erodes the credibility of the local government and the effectiveness of grassroots governance, and violates the spirit of the rule of law of administration according to law.
This year, the No. 1 document of the central government and the "Government Work Report" clearly put forward "improving the level of rural governance". It is necessary to strengthen the subjective status of farmers in the environment and track of the rule of law, so that the farmers themselves can "deliberate" and "take charge" of agriculture-related matters, so as to effectively protect the rights and interests of farmers from being infringed, effectively stimulate the internal drive and enthusiasm of farmers, and truly improve the level of rural governance and the efficiency of grassroots governance. In the face of the reasonable claims of the villagers, the village committee and the local government should clearly explain the current whereabouts of the compensation and the next distribution plan, so as to ensure the legitimate rights and interests of the land-expropriated farmers in accordance with the law.
Source: CCTV Comprehensive China Central Radio and Television Station, Voice of China, CCTV News