(ECNS) -- Anti-smoking hotlines in some Chinese cities have never been used, raising concerns over the effectiveness of China's anti-tobacco efforts, West China City Daily reported.
The hotlines have never received any complaints from the public, according to officials from three cities - Yinchuan, Nanning and Shaoxing. Without adequate promotion, the public are not even aware of the anti-smoking hotlines, let alone using them, says Yang Jie, a researcher from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
From April 2014 to June 2015, Beijing Impact Law Firm (BILF) requested local municipal governments to publicize information about their anti-smoking efforts. Among replies from thirteen cities, they discovered the "non-existant" hotlines.
Accordingly, Shenzhen ranks No. 1 in terms of dishing out fines with a total of 489 500 yuan (about $78 858) issued. It is followed by Hangzhou with 353 500 yuan, Shanghai with 208 100 and Tianjin with 39 700.
Shaoxing has only three anti-smoking agents, compared to 1200 in Tianjin. Anti-smoking agencies are short-staffed and over-burdened, according to Liu Hui, the director of an anti-smoking organization in Beijing. The best solution is to mobilize social forces such as NGOs and volunteers to fight smoking.
Government agencies themselves have disciplinary issues as smoking utensils are repeatedly discovered in Yinchuan health departments, while incidents go unpunished. In contrast, Shanghai took measures against eight institutions and four officials for smoking.
BILF believes numbers provided in government replies are valuable despite the fact that BILF does not validate or confirm these, according to Wang Zhenyu, a company lawyer.
