Samjiyon’s party committee recently created an anonymous feedback system to allow the public to evaluate how well disease control officials are doing, Daily NK has learned.
A Daily NK source in Yanggang Province said Friday that the Samjiyon party committee has been accepting public feedback through so-called “tip boxes for feedback on good and bad behavior.” He said that the boxes were created to let anyone sound off on the actions of officials mobilized for emergency quarantine activities since May 12, when North Korea announced its first official COVID-19 outbreak.
The feedback boxes are similar in form to election boxes and allow people to tip off the authorities — anonymously, in their own writing — to things they have seen and heard from quarantine officials. People can provide feedback on a wide variety of things, including how officials treat COVID-19 patients, issues regarding quarantine policies, good and bad behavior on the part of officials, as well as complaints regarding difficulties in making ends meet.
According to the source, the city party committee said the feedback boxes are not petitions; rather, they are aimed at simply receiving feedback on good and bad behavior among officials. Going forward, the committee plans to use the data in long-term quarantine efforts, reflecting what needs improvement and public sentiment on specific issues.
Municipal party secretaries, high-level officials and the heads of neighborhood watch units have been carrying around the boxes while visiting several households per day to collect feedback, which are written on small pieces of paper.
People in the city are saying that evaluating official behavior through the feedback system is a new experience. They say it is nice to see the chief secretary of the municipal party committee hard at work.
However, people have also voiced skepticism over whether the feedback system is genuinely effective, doubting the anonymity of the process since the authorities could tell who is who by the handwriting, and worrying that expressing what they really think could be dangerous.
“Perhaps cognizant of people’s feelings in this regard, the city party committee told city residents to write in detail about what they think needs to be improved, including what has gone well and what has gone bad, how they’d like the city to perform quarantine efforts in the future, and how to improve people’s lives,” said the source.
After it gathers the responses, the municipal party committee plans to use the feedback to prepare for a long-term disease control campaign aimed at “stabilizing the lives of the people” by improving hospital services, disease-related treatment and prevention efforts, quarantine and sanitation measures, and animal-related quarantine efforts.
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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