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More Rural Labor Force to Go to Township Enterprises
Chinese township enterprises are expected to employ more rural residents in an effort to reduce idle labor force in the countryside, said the Ministry of Agriculture Friday.
The government urges more township enterprises to engage in businesses that will absorb more employees, such as the service industry and the farm produce processing industry, said Liu Zengsheng, director of the Bureau of Township Enterprises under the Ministry.
China has witnessed growing surplus labor in rural areas as it is modernizing the agricultural sector and also suffering from the depressed growth of farmers' income.
In the government's Tenth Five-year Plan, the country aims to have farmers' annual income rise by 5 percent on average and 40 million rural population employed in the next five years.
"Township enterprises, regarded as grassroots businesses in the countryside, offer the major solution for this problem," said Chen Naixing, an expert with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Township enterprises in China have employed 128 million people, equal to almost half of the idle labor force in rural areas and 33. 7 percent of farmers' annual net income on average came from township enterprises last year.
"China has too many people working for traditional agriculture industries," he said, "The modernization of agriculture is doomed to produce increasing idle labor force."
Agricultural population in China has engaged 70 percent of the total population, compared with 10 percent in developed countries.
The government encourages town ship enterprises to let farmers hold their shares or lease some collectively owned township companies, said Liu Zengsheng.
China To Overhaul Its Labor MarketChina's labor and social security officials will launch a drive to overhaul the labor markets to better protect the interests of laid-off workers.
At present, many job agencies are cheating those eager to have a job by providing bad information or charging extremely high fees.
China has reported a 3.1 percent urban registered unemployment rate recently. Due to the surge of migrating rural workers, it is still hard for urban laid-off workers to find a job.
"Those job agencies who are operating illegally have seriously harmed the interests of job seekers and prevented the labor market from being smoothly developed," the official said.
According to the official, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security will launch an inspection in the second quarter of this year. It has also urged provinces and departments to better carry out the preferential policies for laid-off workers to find new jobs.
Employment Training System Takes ShapeChina has set up a large employment training system, marking a great breakthrough in improving labor quality.
According to the official, China has so far set up some 3,790 schools, enrolling a total of more than 1.4 million students. These schools mainly provide employment training for those junior and senior high school graduates.
The country also has set up 3,750 employment training centers and more than 15,000 various vocational training agencies. Last year, a total of 8.96 million people received training from these centers and agencies.
According to the latest statistics of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, last year China's employment training system trained 3.58 million laid-off workers, among which 2.26 million had been re-employed after the training.
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