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Legal Assistance Hotlines Cover Almost All of China
A legal service hotline number "148" has been opened in almost every corner of China's vast rural areas to help farmers use legal measures to resolve disputes and protect their legitimate rights, Minister of Justice Gao Changli said Thursday.
The hotline is now available in 2,942 counties, or 96.4 percent of China's total, and soon the entire nation will be covered, the minister told a national teleconference on the expansion of the hotline.
Statistics show that government-employed legal consultants received 3.4 million hotline phone calls from the beginning of 1999 to the end of last May.
"A great number of cases and emergencies that might lead to social disorders have been calmed or resolved through the operations of the 148 hotline," the minister said, noting that it also helped avoid or retrieve 3 billion yuan of economic losses for the public.
The hotline, first launched in March 1998 by the Dongming County Justice Bureau of Shandong Province, has since been extended to cover the whole country.
The phonetic pronunciation of "148" sounds like "seeking justice" in Chinese.
The establishment of the hotline nationwide is designed to meet the popular needs for legal knowledge, including hiring lawyers, requesting notarizations, and other kinds of free or paid services, with a view to promoting the rule of law in China.
More than 31,000 people across the country are working in these hotlines.
Statistics from the Ministry of Justice show that the hotline office workers had also received 660,000 visitors with legal problems in the past 17 months.
At the same time, justice bureaus across the country handled a total of 400,000 legal cases transferred from the hotlines and succeeded in mediating 220,000 disputes.
However, the work of local hotline offices is yet to be improved, the minister said, citing the fact that some employees in the offices are not professional enough to offer correct legal advices and some cannot solve problems in time.
The phenomenal success has drawn the attention of foreign experts. The governments of Australia, Vietnam, Canada and Chile have sent judicial delegations to China to learn more about the operation of the hotlines.
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