CHARITIES sending aid to flood-ravaged southern China are keeping close tabs on relief funding, mindful of tighter aid budgets as well as widespread criticism that money was misused during the last major floods in 1991.
Chinese officials, warning any misappropriation of funds will be severely punished, have denied previous relief aid was ever diverted from flood victims.
Lu Bingsu, head of the administration and finance department at Xinhua (the New China News Agency), repeated the pledge yesterday at a flood relief charity event in Sheung Wan. He said Xinhua had already received $205 million for flood assistance from Hong Kong.
But many aid agencies, adamant that previous donations may have lined the pockets of Chinese cadres, are determined to oversee the use of all funding.
''You have to watch every penny,'' one relief agency source said. ''Things have had a tendency of disappearing in China if you're not careful.'' And monitoring may be more critical this year than ever before, as funding for flood relief appears tight.
Yesterday the Hong Kong Government approved allocations of $20 million from the Disaster Relief Fund. However, the money is nearly half the amount requested by local aid groups.