My Wife is a Counsel Chapter 13: Poverty-stricken areas
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Although the kingdom is in the preparatory stage for launching satellites, many rural areas are still poor.
Moreover, the poorest villages are almost all in the northwest region of the original Ansan Province.
The new "Wangzhai" is located in a small town called Xinlong in the northwest. Lu Ming came here half a year ago and observed the development of the poorest rural areas from a bottom-level perspective.
In fact, the northern region is vast and sparsely populated, and there are many plains suitable for mechanized agriculture.
Basically, similar to a certain large Western country in the previous life, plain agricultural mechanization has become the norm. However, it is probably 20 or 30 years behind the Western countries at the same time. In some areas, just like in the 1930s and 1940s, a few horses were used as power. , semi-animal powered machinery pulling farmland and seeding machinery is also very common.
A large number of rural laborers have poured into urban factories. According to statistics, by the middle of this year, the agricultural labor force will account for about 35% of the total labor force in society.
Compared with the big countries in previous generations, the gap is naturally not small. At the same time, its agricultural labor force was already less than 10%. By 1970, it was even only 3%.
However, the Principality of Montenegro has ruled the Northern Territory for more than ten years and has created miracles in the history of the Northern Territory's development.
Xinlong Town is located in a mountainous area. It is a poverty-stricken area in itself, but it is divided into two levels. The border residents in the mountains live a poorer life. For example, the residents at the foot of the mountain basically have electricity, but power outages are more frequent. But candles are not very affordable.
Lu Ming came to Xinlong following the "Rural Electrification Law" and is a development consultant stationed in Xinlong Town by the Dominion Government.
All small towns in the Northern Territory now have a mayor-council system, elected by the residents of the town themselves.
In fact, the mayor (mayor) of a small town will basically be the head of a local prominent family, because the autonomy power is extremely powerful, and he can decide almost all aspects of the town. So, if you do not do well, naturally you cannot blame it on the superiors. Policies, etc. If you want your family to maintain high prestige in the local area, you really need to find ways to make the town better and better and the residents' living standards higher and higher.
Otherwise, you can't just pat your **** and leave, otherwise you will be stabbed to death by the villagers in the back.
At the same time, the problem is that the Northern Territory has always been in a closed and backward state, so these town mayors and councilors may not know how to develop the economy of the town. Therefore, in many remote towns, the autonomous territory government sends development consultants is a common practice.
These development consultants are not public servants, but more like volunteers. They are usually economic professionals who go to the countryside to alleviate poverty, and some of them are university professors.
In the Xining Autonomous Territory where Xinlong is located, more than 100 small towns have been dispatched with development consultants, which is the largest number of development consultants sent by any autonomous territory in the Kingdom. They even had to apply for support from the Royal Government.
Lu Ming came here as a trainee teaching assistant at the School of Economics of Xinjing University for two years.
There are more than 20,000 people in Xinlong Town, including more than 5,000 border residents living in the mountains.
The town itself has a population of more than 3,000.
But in fact, many laborers have gone to the city to work, and there are not so many people actually living in the local area.
The town elected a mayor and five council members, recruited a peace officer, and a financial supervisory board composed of village representatives formed the structure of the entire town management organization.
There is also a post office, but it is a police agency of the Federal Kingdom.
The Xinlong Substation, which manages the power distribution of three nearby towns, is stationed by the Tianhan Kingdom Electric Power United Company.
The Kingdom has two major power companies, Royal Eastern Power Grid Group and Tianhan Kingdom Electric Power United Company.
The former is a private power company in which the royal family holds more than 70% of the shares, while the latter is 100% controlled by the Kingdom's Stock Holding Bureau.
The predecessor of the Kingdom Holding Bureau is Montenegro Investment Company, but now it has withdrawn from competition in all profitable industries and focuses on the field of public affairs, which is basically infrastructure construction and loss-making transactions involving welfare and livelihood industries. .
However, public utilities that require taxpayer subsidies are even more in need of regulation.
For example, Tianhan Kingdom Electric Power Co., Ltd. has a board of directors appointed by the shareholding bureau, which appoints seven directors, and the board of directors appoints the CEO and other management teams.
Its financial openness and transparency meet the standards of listed companies, and it accepts financial control from national inspectors, audit courts, financial inspection bureaus and other departments.
Whether it is the company's directors or the CEO and other management teams, they all come from the private sector. It is a truly corporate management, and there are strict regulations from the management level to employee wages, which are basically the median of the working class.
As for the Royal Eastern Power Grid Group, it also receives government subsidies for power grid construction, so its financial statements must be extremely transparent and power prices must be strictly controlled.
Lu Ming just wanted to look at the pros and cons of different models of doing public utilities, and compare the efficiency, cost control, and pursuit of new technologies among different models.
Besides, the Royal Grid belongs to itself. If it does not do well, it will be absorbed by the shareholding bureau, which is just a matter of one word.
……
Lu Ming, a development consultant, rented a three-story house on a hillside in a town councilor's home. Lu Ming rented on the second floor.
The congressman's name is Kan Daxing. He is in his forties and is a large landowner in the town. He also opened a mountain fruit canning factory in the past few years and is considered the richest person in the town.
The mayor is Mr. An, who comes from a scholarly family in the town. He once served as a primary school principal in the county and is now retired.
Members at the city, county, and town levels are all part-time and receive no salary. Only those at the Dominion level have dedicated offices and financial allocations.
The mayor is paid. According to the local financial situation, the annual salary of the mayor of Xinlong Town is 115 yuan, which is not as high as the salary of the workers of the Shanguo Canning Factory established by Kanda.
The mayor and town council don't have a place to hold meetings, so they usually come to Kan Daxing's house to talk about things in the living room on the first floor.
That's what happened today. One councilor was not at home. The mayor and the other four council members, plus Lu Ming, a total of six people were in the meeting. Except for Lu Ming, several people were smoking, making it full of smoke.
"Consultant Wang, I want to do everything. Roads are built in the village and electric pulls go up the mountain, but there is no money!" Mr. An sighed.
The largest taxpayer in this town is Kan Daxing's cannery, but the annual tax amount is only more than a thousand yuan.
Generally speaking, Xinlong Town has made little contribution to national taxation. For example, personal tax. There are only a few people in the entire town who have reached the threshold for personal tax. According to relevant policies, the enterprise business tax has also been retained in the local area and transferred to the local government. It is used as financial revenue for the town and used for the development of the town.
As for the kingdom's agricultural taxation, it protects small and medium-sized farms, and the taxation is also very complicated. The land occupied by Kan Daxing belongs to a medium-sized farm, and the number of employees and salary level meet the tax exemption conditions.
However, Kan Daxing donates about 5,000 yuan to the "Xinlong Development Fund" every year. The "Xinlong Development Fund" itself was also born because of Kan Daxing's donation. This "fund" is composed of villagers' representatives and the "Financial Supervisory Board" "Supervision, the township fiscal budget and the use of the fund require the approval of the "Financial Supervisory Board."
The board of supervisors is actually very loose. Any resident can participate as a representative during the meeting. The legal number of people in a meeting is fifty, which is usually organized by some enthusiastic people who care about rural affairs. Sometimes the number of people at the meeting is not enough and you need to recruit people.
Of course, it only holds one or two hearings a month. That is, when the town's decision-making requires money, it must be made public to all villagers. In addition to loudspeaker broadcasts, a sufficient quorum of the Board of Supervisors is required to conduct hearings.
At this time, Lu Ming listened to Mr. An's words and nodded slightly.
From what I have seen in the past six months, I actually feel that it is not necessary to send development consultants to small towns in poor areas. Basically, the people selected in small towns are all talented people. If they have money in the finance, they all know about such poor areas. It is best to build infrastructure first.
On the other hand, some development consultants, if they are unconventional, may encourage others to do something wrong.
Well, I seem to have developed a kind of formalism.
Lu Ming thought silently.