BEIJING, March 12 (Xinhuanet) -- China's lawmakers have focused their attention on making or revising laws concerning food security, education and social security, among others, a top legislator said here Saturday.

    Sheng Huaren, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) and deputy secretary general of the current NPC session, told the presidium Saturday that up to the noon time on March 10, the deadline for presenting motions, lawmakers to the NPC session presented a total of 991 motions, up 54.6 percent as compared with last year's figure of 641 motions.

    All the motions are concerned with legislation, he said. A total of 452 motions, or 45.6 percent, propose making new laws, and the remaining 539 motions propose revisions to existing laws.

    "It epitomized the strong desire of NPC deputies to step up the building of socialist democracy and law as well as the urgent needof legal protection for economic and social development and improvement of people's livelihood," Sheng said.

    Presenting motions during parliament session has been an important right of and form to foot the duty of NPC deputies, according to Chinese law. The number of motions presented during parliament session surpassed 1,000 in 2003, but dropped to 641 last year.

    Among the 991 motions, about 31.9 percent, totaling 316, are relevant to making or revising laws concerning food security, compulsory education, and maintaining public order.

    China handled about 390,000 cases of the production and sale offake or substandard food, worth 1.46 billion yuan (176.5 million US dollars) last year. The country prosecuted 128,000 such cases and turned 1,585 of them over to judicial authorities, according to earlier Xinhua reports.

    Vice-Premier Wu Yi urged the government's food and medicine authorities in a national meeting last January to establish a series of mechanisms to ensure food and medicine safety, includinga comprehensive rating system, a standard and technology support, a credit mechanism and an information evaluation and early alert index mechanism.

    Another 237 motions, accounting for 24 percent, focus on laws of economic affairs. They include proposing strengthening nationalauditory system, revising the land-using system and the law on postal service.

    China penalized or detained 754 officials last December after auditors uncovered the misuse of government money. By October lastyear, the treasury reclaimed 20.87 billion yuan (approximately 2.52 billion US dollars) out of the 28.6 billion yuan (about 3.46 billion US dollars) that was found to be illegally kept by government departments. This was after the National Audit Office investigated into the implementation of the 2003 government budget.

    Other motions cover the making or revising laws concerning social insurance, employment, social welfare, election, criminal code, stocks intellectual property protection, bankruptcy.

    Sheng told the presidium that after analyzing the motions, there is none so urgent as to be reviewed at current parliament session, scheduled to conclude on Monday.

    The presidium decided that the motions will be forwarded to specific committees of the NPC for further reviews. The NPC has nine such special committees accountable of handling the motions.

    Also on Saturday, the presidium adopted draft resolutions to ratify the work reports of the NPC Standing Committee, the SupremePeople's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate. The draft resolutions will be put to vote at parliament session on Monday. Enditem