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City asks employees to leave suits and ties home to save energy
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-07-01 21:23
As the Chinese summer heats up, civil servants in the capital have been told
to dress down to save on energy, state media said Friday.
With many cities in China facing severe power shortages, the Beijing city
government has given its staff the go ahead to dress casually for internal
meetings so that air conditioner usage can be kept to a minimum, the official
Xinhua News Agency reported.
Government offices were advised to keep air conditioners at 26 degrees
Celsius (78 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher from July 1 to August 31.
It is the first time that civil servants have been asked to dress in casual
clothes instead of the Western-style suits and neckties adopted by most
government employees.
Japan's central government introduced a casual dress code for its officials
earlier this summer, a move that proved hugely popular with employees and the
public.
In a further effort to conserve energy, Beijing's city government has started
to use power-efficient light bulbs, Xinhua said.
The changes have cut the cost of electricity at city government offices to
80,000 yuan (US$10,000; euro8,000) a month from about 100,000 yuan (US$12,000;
euro10,000) , the agency said.
Many Chinese cities have been facing power shortfalls as booming industries
compete with rising electricity consumption by millions of air conditioners.
Unseasonably hot weather over the past two weeks also pushed power
consumption to record highs in Beijing, Shanghai and other parts of northern and
central China.
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