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Help migrant workers

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-05 07:31

There is nothing like going home. More so if it is for the Spring Festival family reunion. It is something every Chinese looks forward to as the traditional gala draws near.

For a migrant worker it perhaps means even more. To be able to set out on a homeward journey with money from a year's toil in his pocket is the best thing he can think of.

Unfortunately, weeks preceding the Spring Festival have turned out to be hard times for migrant workers. They had to press hard for their defaulted payments. Whether they get the money will make all the difference to their happiness during the festival.

About 200 million migrant workers nationwide are a legacy of economic reforms and opening up. And the contributions they have made to what the country has achieved in the past three decades are tremendous.

And many have become part of the cities or towns where they work. It is almost impossible to imagine life in these places without them.

However, they still form a disadvantaged group. Their rights are violated in different forms.

Among other things, salaries in arrears are the most painful of such violations that are likely to drive a migrant worker to desperate actions. Some have reportedly climbed up chimneys threatening to jump to their death unless they get their defaulted salaries.

Premier Wen Jiabao's personal help to such a worker in Chongqing to get back his defaulted payments in 2003 has become something of a metaphor. It has come to represent national efforts assisting the workers in recovering their salaries in arrears in the past several years.

Objectively speaking, governments at various levels have done a great deal in helping these workers recover their defaulted salaries. They have taken measures to prevent employers from holding back payments to them.

Yet, as the financial crisis bites deep, some small enterprises that are struck the most try to reduce their economic losses by laying off migrant workers or refusing to pay them.

So it is particularly important for governments at all levels to do an even better job in helping villager-turned-workers recover their salaries in arrears before the Spring Festival.

However difficult the situations they are in, it is too cruel and unfair for employers to hold back salaries they should pay their migrant workers. And those employers who deliberately rip off workers by refusing them their payments should be punished in accordance with the law.

It is good news that quite a number of local governments have organized special taskforces to conduct inspections in those labor-intensive enterprises to make sure they have paid their migrant workers in a timely and fair manner.

Construction commissions in almost all provinces have published hotlines for farmer-turned-construction workers to lodge complaints against their employers for withholding their salaries.

Hopefully, these efforts will send more workers on a happy journey home for the Spring Festival with their salaries in their pockets.

But we need to look for solutions that will work at all times. We need to put in place a mechanism that will effectively prevent employers from holding back salaries to workers.

(China Daily 01/05/2009 page4)