Red card for officials over Henan red code drama

Five officials in Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province, have been punished for marking some people's health code as red over reasons not related to health, the city's discipline watchdog said on Wednesday.

It may be recalled that since April, some depositors have found it difficult to withdraw money online from their accounts with four rural joint-stock commercial banks based in Henan.

However, when they tried to straighten things out by going to Zhengzhou or Kaifeng, another city in the province, their health code turned red, suggesting they were in the midst of COVID-19 quarantine or home isolation, and as such were to be put into isolation immediately on arriving at their destinations.

Some still had a green health code on arrival in Zhengzhou, but after being identified as depositors with grievances to air, their health code turned red and they had to stay put, Shanghai Daily reported last week.

According to the discipline watchdog, Feng Xianbin, deputy secretary of the politics and law committee of the CPC committee of the Zhengzhou, and Zhang Linlin, secretary of the city's Youth League committee, unjustly decided to give red codes to some of the bank depositors, while three other officials were instructed to carry out the decision.

Both Feng ang Zhang are high officials of the city's command for the prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result, a total of 1,317 depositors were given a red code, among whom 446 were red-coded when scanning certain site codes in Zhengzhou while the rest, despite not being in Henan, received the red code when they scanned site codes from the city shared by others, the watchdog said.

Feng was stripped both of his title in the Party and of his job post, while Zhang was given a serious intra-Party warning and her job level was downgraded.

The three other officials were given disciplinary punishment related to their posts.