Having a hotline to the city mayor sounds like a good idea but the initiative has been panned by the public in a poll, with eighty percent of those surveyed giving a resolute thumbs down, according to a series of surveys conducted by the People's Daily.

Wuhan city in central China's Hubei province and Shenyang in northeast Liaoning province launched mayor's hotlines in 1983 at a time when governments at all levels in China were looking for ways of improving communication with ordinary citizens.

In 1999, the Ministry of Information Industry set aside the number 12345 for the hotlines.

More than 600 Chinese cities now have mayor's hotlines to listen to the voice of citizens and answer their questions on government policies.

Other communication initiatives include live interviews with officials on the internet.

However, about 80 percent of the 202 respondents to an online survey said the hotlines were "of no use". Only 10 percent believed they were "useful" and "could solve some problems," and the other 10 percent thought they were "OK" partly because they gave citizens the opportunity to provide suggestions for government work.

In another survey of 130 interviewees, only 7 percent said they were satisfied with the hotline services.

In another survey, reporters phoned mayor's hotlines but in nearly half the cities they found it hard to get through because of limited facilities and telephone operators.

In some cities, telephone operators were only responsible for taking notes and reporting problems to government agencies rather than actually dealing with problems.

Reporters cited the case of a farmer from Wenzhou City in east China's Zhejiang Province who was cheated out of money in a bank on May 11. Unable to obtain satisfaction from the bank and the police, the farmer dialed 12345 for help, only to be told to appeal to the local police station, the newspaper said.

Source: Xinhua