An executive meeting held by the State Council and chaired by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Friday pressed governments of all levels to crack down on malpractice in urban relocation cases in a bid to protect public interests.

The meeting also approved a decision by central China's Hunan Province to dismiss senior officials of the Jiahe county government.

The Hunan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) had decided to dismiss secretary of the CPC Committee of Jiahe County Zhou Yuwu, county magistrate Li Shidong, deputy county magistrate Li Shuifu and assistant to the county magistrate Lei Xianzhi, for misusing their power in a relocation case.

At the meeting, governments at all levels were warned against changing city planning at their will and irrational development of the construction projects in the urbanization drive.

They must tighten the procedure of using farming land for other purposes and compensate local residents properly for relocation, the meeting said.

The government will improve supervision on relocation companies and carefully grant the certificate of relocation to clear up illegal forced relocation and misuse of forced actions, the meeting said.

Compensation funds must be in place and granted to residents in time when the relocation is carried out, the meeting added.

Those who violate rules to expand relocation, misuse government power and steal compensation funds will be seriously punished, the meeting said.

According to the probe team jointly sent by the provincial government and the Ministry of Construction to Jiahe, the county government granted the land-use certificate to a real estate developer before it paid for the land use right and the certificate to relocate original residents without a compensation fund and relocation plan in place.

A hearing, which is required by law, was not held before the county government forced 11 families to move from their residences.

Three residents were improperly detained and 11 officials were wrongly demoted or dismissed from original posts due to the relocation case since December last year.

(Xinhua News Agency June 5, 2004)