China strengthens community worker management to enhance grassroots governance

BEIJING, April 11 (Xinhua) -- China has issued guidelines to improve the management and training of its community workers to further enhance the country's grassroots governance.

According to the guidelines, China expects to effectively improve the overall performance of community workers and their professional identification in five years, with measures to promote professional training and improve the income of community workers.

In China, community workers are full-time staff members for community Party building, governance, and services, including those at Party organizations in communities and residents' committees. They are an important part of the country's grassroots self-governance system.

Community workers are set to receive strengthened training to enhance their professional capacity, especially the ability to engage with the public, organize and mobilize the people, mediate disputes, respond to emergencies, facilitate communication between different parties, and use information technology, the guidelines stated, adding that community workers should handle disputes in communities with empathy to help maintain the harmony in neighborhoods.

The guidelines emphasized the necessity of establishing a training mechanism covering community workers nationwide and required that secretaries of community Party organizations and directors of residents' committees should receive training from county-level Party committees at least once a year.

China's universities and colleges as well as vocational schools will strengthen the construction of their subjects related to social work and provide more lessons regarding community management and services, the guidelines said.

The country will optimize the community worker structure through measures such as attracting more social work professionals, college graduates and veterans to the career, according to the guidelines.

Related authorities will study and formulate national occupational standards for community workers and design career development paths in accordance with their job characteristics, the guidelines said.

They will also set up a scientific and clear system of job classification and leveling for community workers based on their responsibilities, work experience, degree of expertise, and education level.

These efforts are aimed at ensuring that community workers have the essential qualities and skills for their jobs and to enhance the employee well-being and job prospects for community workers in China, said a statement from the Organization Department and the Social Work Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.