Authorities around China are working to ensure that migrant
workers are fully paid before the Chinese Lunar New Year.
These days, more and more migrant workers are rushing back to
their hometowns with salaries in their pockets.
Southeast China's Fujian
Province has largely finished its work of paying defaulted
salaries to migrant workers.
In some other provinces, such as Heilongjiang,
Liaoning,
and Anhui,
an emergency plan has been launched to ensure those workers in the
construction and service industries get fully paid.
In Kunshan of the eastern Jiangsu
Province, a local regulation rules that construction
contractors must make a deposit against their salary liabilities if
their project is worth over 500,000 yuan or about US$61,000. This
move has yielded great success.
"Ever since the implementation of this rule, no salaries of
migrant workers has been deliberately defaulted," said Gu Zhizhong,
the chairman of the local trade union.
According to the Ministry of Construction, 98 percent of the
total defaulted salaries for construction workers since 2003, have
already been paid, which totaled more than US$4 billion.
(CRI January 20, 2005)