To prevent officials from misusing their official cars, all government vehicles in a Chinese province will be equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) devices from next month.

Over 31,000 vehicles being used by officials of the ruling Communist Party of China and government in Guangdong provincial capital are now required to be equipped with GPS devices, Su Zhijia, deputy Party chief of Guangzhou said.

"The move aims to strengthen management of the city's large number of government cars and prevent them from being used for private purposes," Su was quoted by the state-run China Daily today.

Guangzhou is the first metropolis to install GPS devices in government cars in Guangdong province, which borders the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions.

The GPS scheme is being launched at the provincial level after a pilot project in a district registered a 24 per cent drop in the operational costs due to fears of monitoring, Su said.

The cars will be supervised in real time once they are equipped with GPS devices. Departments that manage the official cars could immediately know where the cars are; they could also directly contact the people on board or send them text messages.

Su also promised to further improve and standardise the regulations for the use of government cars in 2011.

Guangzhou has more than 31,000 registered government cars. Zhang Jieming, director of the city's bureau of finance, said the government pays up to 35,000 yuan (USD 5,316) annually for each government car, including parking fees, tolls and gasoline.

The government also pays each government driver a monthly salary of about 5,000 yuan.

"Many official cars have been found to be frequently used for non-official duties in the past," Zhang said.

The move followed a directive from the CPC to step up campaign against corruption and misuse of official positions which emerged as major problems after the country opened economic reforms.

Recently another province, Jiangsu introduced a computer software to monitor the work of officials to prevent corruption and to force them to keep up to the deadlines. PTI KJV