Beijing, June 14 :

China will work harder to ensure the 2008 Olympics are corruption free, organizers said on Wednesday, following the sacking of a senior Beijing official who was heavily involved in games preparations.

“We are paying a lot of attention to our anti-corruption work in order to ensure an honest and clean Olympic Games,” Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) spokesman Sun Weide said.

“We will strengthen supervision in an effort to make the games organization open and transparent.” Sun was speaking after the government announced on Sunday that Beijing vice

mayor Liu Zhihua, who was

in charge of construction for the Olympics, was sacked for alleged corruption.

Liu, 57, oversaw construction, real estate, sports and traffic projects in the capital, and was required to report to the city’s parliament on the progress of Olympics venue work.

The Beijing legislature said: “The facts of Liu Zhihua’s wrongdoings are clear, the evidence irrefutable, the circumstances serious and the influence vile,” the official Xinhua news agency said.

Beijing’s top Communist Party official and the chairman of BOCOG, Liu Qi, called for a renewed fight against corruption in the capital following the scandal.

“The struggle against corruption is a long-term, complicated and difficult task where we

must constantly ring the alarm bells,” state media quoted him as saying.

“Every level of party organization must strengthen the supervision and administration of party cadres and deepen the scope of the anti-corruption struggle,” he said. “We must punish corruption and build an honest and clean party and government.”