A 65-year-old district legislator in Wuhan who complained about the state of public toilets was ordered by an official to take a brush and clean them himself.
Now the senior official who instructed Zhu Xinzhou to do the cleaning for the past two months is the subject of an inquiry into abuse of power.
Mr Zhu was told he would be given 20 yuan (HK$18.90) more than the 60 yuan a toilet cleaner normally made each month, in order to reflect his position as a district People's Congress representative.
The case began when Mr Zhu became a Qingshan district legislator in October 1998 and told the district Government he believed the seven public toilets in Wudongsi village were too few for its 1,561 residents and too dirty.
'Men had to accompany women at night because they were not even fitted with lights, and one evening a resident actually found a big snake inside one,' Mr Zhu recalled in a Beijing Morning Post report.
On October 17 he repeated his demands at a legislative session and the next day Qingshan District Health Bureau deputy chief Yang Yingchun told him that as he was so familiar with the problem, he would be tasked with solving it personally.