Olympic Games officials will seek to avoid a repeat of October's ticketing fiasco when tickets for the 2008 Paralympics Games' opening and closing ceremonies go on sale next week.
The Paralympics tickets go on sale on Monday, the same day organisers of the Beijing Olympics (Bocog) plan to relaunch the second round of general ticket sales after abandoning the first-come, first-served approach just over a month ago.
On October 30, millions of applicants swamped the online ticketing system, jammed telephone lines and caused lengthy queues at the 1,000 designated branches of the Bank of China in the rush for tickets.
Zhu Yan, the man brought in over ticketing department chief Rong Jun, said 21,000 opening-ceremony tickets and 26,000 for the closing ceremony would be allocated to mainland residents through a lottery.
'We are faced with pressures and challenges because of great public demand and their eagerness to participate in the Olympics and Paralympics,' Mr Zhu said yesterday.
Mainland media had reported that Mr Rong was sacked to take the blame for the collapse of the ticket-booking system, but Bocog executive vice-president Wang Wei said that although Mr Rong had become the ticketing centre's deputy director, his roles remained the same.