Nearly a dozen government and Party officials from Hubei province in central China have been discipline for sleeping and playing with their phones during meetings about how to improve one’s work ethic.

After several officials doze through most of the proceedings at two work conferences earlier this month, the municipal government of Xiangyang decided on Friday to recruit 20 citizen supervisors to conduct both open and secret investigations into the “work styles” of civil servants.

On Feb. 5, six Party officials were caught by television cameras as they slept through a meeting on how to eliminate laziness, mediocrity, the shirking of responsibility, tardiness, and impatience in their work.

Afterward, the city’s discipline inspection commission announced that the officials’ violation of meeting decorum would be publicly announced to the whole city, and that both the individuals and their superiors had been invited for a “conversation.” The napping officials were also told to write “in-depth self-criticisms,” to be circulated among their colleagues.

The commission’s strict response did not succeed in rousing other officials, however. After the same meeting was repeated a few days later for cadres working in rural areas surrounding Xiangyang, five participants were ordered to write self-criticisms because they were either asleep or more interested in their phones during the conference.

With a recruitment drive for citizen supervisors underway, the municipal government now hopes to keep cadres alert at all times. An employee of the municipal discipline inspection commission surnamed Zhang told Sixth Tone that China’s central government has made improving the work habits of civil servants a major task for 2017. “We need more citizens involved in discipline inspection work,” Zhang said. “They can report the disciplinary offenses to us directly.” The supervisors are required to be of middle age and in good health, and to have “clean records.”

The government of Chenzhou, a city in neighboring Hunan province, also announced plans this month to help officials “establish new manners” and “get rid of bad habits,” including using personal connections, spending government money, and arriving late and leaving early.

On Wednesday an employee working in the Chenzhou High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, was reprimanded for drinking walnut milk at his desk at 9 a.m.

Huang Zhizhong, secretary of the local disciplinary office, told The Beijing News that his department had conducted a secret investigation to remind civil servants to focus on their work now that Spring Festival has ended. “What he was doing at the time was eating breakfast; he admitted this himself,” Huang said, adding that such behavior would look bad if visitors came by the office.

Spotting officials dozing off is also an annual sport at the “two sessions” — yearly parliamentary meetings held all over the country. In 2013, several congress members from Shenzhen in southern China were seen sleeping during one of the meetings, while Hubei representatives were reportedly busy using their phones to trade on the stock market.

In 2014, famous Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan, who attended the national conference in an advisory capacity, reportedly fell asleep during one meeting. “I really didn't sleep,” he explained to the media later, claiming that he was just rubbing his eyes.

On social media, Xiangyang’s attempts to keep officials alert were met mostly with understanding for the napping cadres. “Whether the participants fall asleep depends on the meetings’ quality and importance,” wrote one net user. “They may as well not hold meetings like this; it’s just a waste of people’s energy.”

(Header image: Three officials sleep during a government conference in Dongguan, Guangdong province, Feb. 29, 2012. IC)