More than 400 civil servants in Gwangju worked through the night from Wednesday into Thursday to fix color-coded welfare cards, following public outcry and a presidential rebuke over the city’s handling of a consumer voucher program seen as discriminatory.
The city had distributed prepaid cards in colors of pink, light green and navy, each corresponding to recipients' income levels and subsidy amounts. It was part of the nationwide stimulus coupon program that launched Monday.
Civil rights groups and the presidential office denounced the move as a violation of privacy and a stigmatizing practice that publicly exposed recipients’ financial status.
On Wednesday, President Lee Jae Myung rebuked the city for its "lack of sensitivity to human rights."
As an immediate fix that evening, the city launched an emergency operation to cover the cards with uniform stickers. Starting from 9 p.m., over 400 public employees were mobilized from neighborhood administrative offices to handle the job.
In protest of the abrupt workload increase during ongoing flood recovery efforts, the labor union representing Gwangju government employees said it plans to hold a press conference.
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