Local prosecutors in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality prosecuted 473 people for duty-related crimes in the first four months of this year as it vowed to further crack down on abuses of power.

The 473 people, including 71 officials at the county level and above, were indicted in 376 individual cases, 70 percent of which were duty crimes in areas important to people's well-being, according to a statement on the municipal government's official website.

"This year, with the municipal government increasing its investment in areas important to people's well-being, we will increase our scrutiny on the key segments," an official from the People's Procuratorate of Chongqing Municipality, the city's prosecuting body, was quoted by local media as saying.

The key segments include social welfare, food and drug safety, land requisition and demolition, subsidies provided to farmers and people relocated due to the Three Gorges Dam.

Meanwhile, the procuratorate also pledged intensified investigations in the infrastructure area.

The local authority said it had no further comment to make regarding the cases or further probing efforts.

Most of those prosecuted are facing bribery allegations.

The most high-ranking official prosecuted was Jia Jinming, the former deputy inspector of the municipal police, who is facing allegations of abuse of power and bribery.

Records on the official website of the municipal government show that Jia rose from police chief of Fuling district in the municipality to the political commissar of the municipal police's public transportation section in 2008.

He then rose to deputy inspector of the municipal police, a symbolic position with a rank equivalent to deputy police chief, in 2010.

Meanwhile, 14 people have been found guilty of bribery and two others guilty of malpractice of duty in a coal mine accident in the municipality's Fengjie district last year.

The accident, which took place on Oct 17, 2011, killed 13 miners. The bribery case is estimated to reach tens of millions of yuan.

Duty crime has been one of the biggest targets of China's procuratorates in recent years.

In 2011, the people's procuratorates nationwide probed 32,567 cases of duty crime involving 44,506 people, up 1 percent from 2010, according to a work report delivered this year by Cao Jianming, China's chief prosecutor, at the National People's Congress session.

xuwei@chinadaily.com.cn