Chapter 1267 Someone dares to embezzle relief funds
May 13th, Huai'an Prefecture, Jiangbei Road, on the embankment of Hongze Lake!
The water level is already close to the top of the original height of the embankment, and even on some relatively low embankments, the water level has exceeded the original height of the embankment.
However, the floodwaters are still firmly restrained on the inside of the levee. This is because more than 100,000 people worked together on the original levee. After fighting for more than ten days, the height of the levee was temporarily raised.
Although these temporarily raised embankments are not as thick as the original embankments, the pressure these temporary embankments bear is not as great as the pressure the bottom embankments bear, so they can withstand it for a while.
However, even if the embankment has not burst, local military and political officials are taking it lightly. On the one hand, they continue to heighten the temporary embankment, and on the other hand, they thicken the original embankment to improve the embankment's ability to resist floods.
.
More than 100,000 people are still working non-stop!
After more than ten consecutive days of high-intensity work, many people fell down from exhaustion. You can see soldiers and civilians resting after their shifts anytime and anywhere. In the rear, you can see many women and children boiling water and rice for the construction of the embankment.
The young men and soldiers provided hot water and rice.
Although the pressure is huge now, the good news is that the sky is no longer gloomy, and it has been raining continuously for more than half a month, and it has finally stopped.
Although it is still raining in the upstream areas, it has stopped raining in Jiangbei Province and has not continued to rain. This means that the amount of floods will be greatly reduced.
At this time, even if a huge amount of water will still pour down the upper reaches, as long as it does not continue to increase, there is still great hope to survive this disaster safely.
On May 18, Kuai Ma announced that the weather in the North Anhui Province area was gradually clearing up and there was no further rain. This meant that the amount of water in the middle and upper reaches of the vast Huaihe River would no longer increase.
After learning the news, many officials in charge of flood control work breathed a sigh of relief!
As long as you don’t continue to increase the amount of water, that’s great news!
On May 25th, an express report came from Henan, saying that the weather had begun to clear up and there was no continuous rain!
At this time, everyone really felt at ease!
As long as there are no large-scale floods in the upstream areas, especially on the Yellow River, there will not be much danger in Jiangbei Road downstream.
Sure enough, at the end of May, the water level of the Huaihe River gradually dropped, and the water level of Hongze Lake, which also acted as a huge reservoir, also gradually dropped.
There is no large amount of water flowing down the upper reaches, and the outlet of the Huaihe River is constantly draining water to the sea, so the water level will naturally drop.
By May 30, the water level of Hongze Lake had dropped from a dangerous height to a safe height. Although the water level was still relatively high, it had dropped to the height of the original levee and no longer threatened the temporarily built levees.
At this time, the government also began to dismiss the conscripted people, leaving only the garrison to continue to guard!
On May 6, the water level officially dropped to a safer level, which is generally the level when it rains.
At this time, it is truly safe.
At this time, even the garrison began to gradually withdraw!
The flood that lasted for a full month has finally passed. However, although the flood has passed without causing large-scale dyke breaches, the damage caused by this flood is still considerable.
In one month, almost half of Henan, most of northern Anhui, and the entire Jiangbei Province were severely tested by floods. Even if there was no large-scale dyke breach, the floods could not be drained out, resulting in considerable waterlogging.
Large areas were submerged by floods, not to mention villages. Even towns were submerged, especially cities near rivers. Most of them were hit by floods.
Taken together, the number of people affected by the floods exceeds tens of millions, and at least one million of them cannot return to their hometowns for a short period of time. Even if they do go back, they still face the heavy task of rebuilding their homes because their homes have been flooded.
, their land was also soaked by floods, and it will not be easy to recover later.
In addition, more than 200,000 people had their hometowns completely submerged and were forced to move to other places. A large number of them were people from the areas around Hongze Lake.
And the number of casualties is not small. Taken together in many places, the number of dead and missing people has reached more than 5,000.
Faced with such huge losses, the follow-up disaster relief work was very difficult, so much so that the Holy Emperor Li Xuan and even the top officials of the entire empire had focused their work on follow-up disaster relief in the past month or two.
Prepared food, clothes and other materials were continuously flowing into the disaster-stricken areas from all over the country. The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal once again played a huge role. Many ships passed through this canal, transporting large amounts of materials from the southern part of the empire.
To Jiangbei Road, the middle and upper reaches of the Huaihe River and the Yellow River area.
"So far, we have allocated 8 million taels of silver for post-disaster relief, mainly used to purchase food, clothing, farm tools, etc. to help the affected people tide over the difficulties. In addition to the 3 million taels of silver spent during the flood fight
, and now the empire has invested eleven million taels of silver in flood fighting and disaster relief!" When Liu Bagou said this, he couldn't help but frown.
This is one thousand one million taels of silver, and this figure does not include military expenses!
The military also spends a lot of money to fight floods. Of course, it is also very expensive to support the army on weekdays. In fact, the military does not spend much extra money. At most, it only spends part of the food and supplies. Considering the financial situation,
Difficulty, the military boss has already made a promise to the cabinet that all military expenses during the flood fighting period will be borne by the military itself, without the need for additional financial allocations.
But even if you exclude the military, the cost is still too high!
What's more, this is just the beginning, and a large amount of funds will definitely be needed for disaster relief in the future!
Li Xuan also saw Liu Bagou's frown, but he still said: "Disaster relief is the empire's most important task this year, let's put the rest aside for now!"
The number of people affected by disasters in various provinces and highways reaches tens of millions, of which millions are temporarily homeless and 200,000 need to be permanently relocated. It is natural that huge expenditures are required.
But if this money is not spent, millions of people will have no food to eat after the disaster, and millions of people will lose their homes, what will they do?
There is no need to guess, they will definitely become refugees and then evolve into rebels!
Even with strict official control and relief, a large number of people in the disaster area have begun to flee the disaster area with their families, and a large number of them are trying to escape to areas not affected by the disaster, especially the Jiangnan region.
According to the monitoring of relevant official yamen, in just one month, more than 100,000 people crossed the Yangtze River and flocked to various places in the south of the Yangtze River, especially those places where they are rumored to be able to make a living, such as industrial cities represented by Shanghai.
A large number of victims came in.
They want to find a job to survive, that's all!
And this is considered good, after all, I just want to find a job and make a living.
What the officials fear most is that they will turn into large-scale refugees, and then become like locusts, destroying everything wherever they go, and then bringing man-made disasters to areas that have not been affected by natural disasters.
In the ancient feudal dynasty, natural disasters were not terrible, but what was even more terrible were the man-made disasters after natural disasters!
Therefore, the military of the Tang Empire maintained extremely high vigilance to guard against all kinds of large-scale unrest.
But relying solely on high-pressure military deterrence is no longer enough. After all, when people don’t have enough to eat, it’s impossible to consider the consequences.
Therefore, martial law is important, but relief is even more important.
Li Xuan immediately said: "In this way, if we squeeze again, we can collect another four million taels of silver, and we will collect fifteen million taels of silver!"
"If you continue to order me, I will ask the officials at all levels below to be more honest with me. If anyone dares to reach out for disaster relief funds, I will take his head!"
Although Li Xuan said this, he knew that people's hearts are inherently evil, especially officials, who are the worst of the worst.
This point makes no difference whether it is the Tang Dynasty or the former Ming Dynasty, so it is almost impossible to rely solely on the self-discipline of officials.
Even monitoring by the Supervisory Office is impossible. After all, this is fifteen million taels of silver. Anyone who sees such a huge amount of money will be jealous.
Therefore, Li Xuan called people from the Investigation and Statistics Section of the Hanlin Academy and asked them to focus on monitoring the corruption problem after the disaster. Anyone who dares to be short-sighted must be dealt with quickly and strictly.
Although it is said that this is the job of the Supervisory Office when it comes to dealing with official corruption, when it comes to actually dealing with it, Hantong's performance is no worse than theirs, or even better.
Because Hantong was originally monitoring all officials, he had a lot of black materials on officials at hand, but usually, these black materials were often locked directly in the archives.
Hantong's archives have been renovated several times. Nowadays, Hantong's archives are basically like a treasury or a bank. Access is very strict. People without a certain level cannot enter, and
There are also strict measures to prevent fire, water, and moth.
Otherwise, if the archives room is burned down casually, it means that many years of Hantong's work will be destroyed in one fell swoop.
The huge archives room of Hantong contains files of almost all mid-level officials. To put it bluntly, it is more complete than the official archives of the Ministry of Personnel.
Now it is better to let Hantong monitor the issue of disaster relief funds than to let the Supervisory Office monitor it.
Of course, the Supervisory Yuan will not relax. The flood control and flood control supervision groups of each provincial highway are still on each provincial highway. The leaders are all the censors of the Supervisory Yuan and the capital, which is enough to intimidate those local officials.
However, there are always people who are so greedy that they are not afraid of death!
Not long after, Hantong submitted a report to Li Xuan, saying that there was a problem with the disaster relief funds of Taoyuan County, Huai'an Prefecture.
The reason why the problem was found so quickly is because Hantong's perspective on the problem is quite unique. They don't look at the specific process, they only look at the results!
Why did they judge that there was a problem with Taoyuan County’s disaster relief funds?
Because Hantong's spies found that the victims in some permanent resettlement sites in Taoyuan County had various problems. Some failed to receive farming tools, food and other materials, and some failed to receive previous supplies.
In some cases, the wages for work-for-work relief programs are reduced by a large amount or even none at all.
Originally, the central government had allocated enough funds for disaster relief, but now there are victims in these resettlement sites who are unable to eat?
No need to ask, there must be something wrong!
Li Xuan saw the report and said gloomily: "How brave!"