Care centers for vagrants require stricter supervision

The death of 15-year-old Lei Wenfeng at a care center for vagrants in Xinfeng, South China's Guangdong province, in December, which was only recently reported by the media, has uncovered serious problems at the government-funded institution.

The boy, who had autism, got lost after leaving home in August. He was alive and well when aid workers sent him to the care center in October. Yet just over a month later he was dead from typhoid fever.

Worse, it has been revealed his death was only the tip of an iceberg. According to media reports, a local undertaker received 20 bodies from the center over 49 days from January to February.

It turns out the Xinfeng center, which opened in 2010 and housed more than 700 vagrants before its closure on March 2, should never have been allowed to operate as it failed to meet the standards required of such institutions.

An initial investigation has highlighted poor management, if not deliberate neglect, at the center, pointing to the inadequate food and firefighting equipment, grisly hygiene conditions, and absence of measures and facilities to protect against infectious diseases, the cause of many of the deaths at the facility.

Yet the center reportedly made profits of more than 2 million yuan ($290,000) a year.

It is not hard to infer that State funds might have been diverted into private pockets at the expense of the welfare of inmates.

The fact that some government officials and their relatives were found to be involved in its operation may explain why local authorities turned a blind eye to what happened at the center.

Vagrants are an especially vulnerable group on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Many of them are found to be in a poor physical and mental condition, making the task of taking care of them especially daunting.

This requires cross-agency collaboration between the civil affairs, public health and public security authorities, which remains scarce, if not nonexistent, in many places in the country. That was partly to blame for the death of Lei, for although his parents had reported he was missing to the police and he was registered at the care center, the police and the care center did not inform each other.

That the Ministry of Civil Affairs launched nationwide inspections of similar institutions on Wednesday is a positive move, as the tragedy has prompted the government to give more attention to this vulnerable group and overhaul the current outdated system for assisting vagrants.