Deputy: Never forget farmers' role in nation

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, March 15, 2004

Deputy: Never forget farmers' role in nation

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Dozens of deputies to the Second Session of 10th National People's Congress (NPC) have urged better protection of the rights and interests of farmers working in cities, saying people should not forget the sweat and labour of those who helped build today's urban prosperity with their calloused hands.

"In view of some current unfair treatment farmers-turned-workers face, I see every reason for a new law to ensure them equal footing with their urban counterparts," said Wang Yuancheng, an NPC deputy from East China's Shandong Province.

Wang initiated a motion calling for a new law to safeguard the rights and interests of farmers now working in cities. The motion has been endorsed by more than 30 NPC deputies.

Wang, by transforming himself from his early years as a farmer into his life today as well-off private entrepreneur, has investigated the labour markets in Beijing and in Shandong Province's Taian and Jinan.

He said he has seen firsthand that farmers-turned-workers' situations have improved since last year with the revocation of a decades-old regulation that stipulated compulsory detention and deportation of people without local residential cards, and a move led by Premier Wen Jiabao himself to recover wage arrears of farmers who were owed money. At least, farmers now can walk downtown and no longer feel helpless in the forests of skyscrapers they see, Wang said.

However, Wang noted that many in cities still face problems, such as decent social security and housing to replace the shabby shelters most of them now must live in.

The education of their children also remains a problem, said Xu Jinglong, an NPC deputy from East China's Anhui Province. Some of the children of farmers working in cities have been kept out of school, owing to the excessively high costs they face simply because they do not have city residential cards.

Statistics indicate 9.3 per cent of the 20 million children of migrant farmers are dropouts.

The mayor of Zigong, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, NPC deputy Luo Linshu, said he can do more than just sign a motion to help the workers.

Of the 87 million people in Zigong, two thirds are farmers. Because of limited local agricultural resources, over 6 million of Zigong farmers have left their hometown to work in other Chinese cities. In the past several years, they have remitted on average 2.6 billion yuan (US$314 million) each year back to the province. Last year, 73 per cent of the increase in net incomes of Zigong farmers came from their work in cities.

To pay back these farmers' contribution to local economic development, Luo said the Zigong government is obliged to help safeguard their legitimate rights and interests in cities.

For example, Zigong will dispatch officials to visit its farmers working in such cities as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province, to see if they can help them through intergovernmental talks to solve some of their problems.

"Many of our farmers working outside want us to help them with governmental intervention in labour disputes in the cities where they work," Luo said.

The country's total wage arrears for migrant farmers is estimated at around 100 billion yuan (US$12.1 billion).

Moreover, Zigong government will step up organized training of farmers before they leave for urban jobs. The training should include legal knowledge in addition to occupational skills in case the farmers need legal weapons to protect themselves, Luo said.

As a piece of good news for the country's millions of migrant labourers, major cities that receive them are adopting a more friendly attitude.

NPC deputy and Guangdong Governor Huang Huahua disclosed during the session that Guangdong will adopt a new local regulation to especially safeguard the rights and interests of farmers-turned-workers in the near future.

The new rule will severely punish those failing to pay salaries to farmers on time and in full, establish a special fund to ensure that no farmers-turned-workers will not have enough to eat, and improve education for children, Huang said.

Source: China Daily

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