Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality is to honor the builders of much of its modern infrastructure with the country's first ever Rural Migrant Workers Day.
The first Sunday of every November will be designated Rural Migrant Workers Day in Chongqing, according to a resolution adopted on Friday by the local legislature.
"The primary purpose for the city to introduce the day is to encourage public respect and fair treatment for migrant workers, and create a harmonious and friendly environment for their work and living," said Tong Xiaoping, vice mayor of Chongqing.
Special symposiums will be held on Rural Migrant Workers Day, which will fall on Nov. 4 this year, to discuss how to provide better professional training, social security insurance, medical services, accommodation and education to migrant worker families, Tong said.
"After the establishment of Rural Migrant Workers Day, I hope governments will make actual efforts to help migrant workers get their due social insurance, wages and help their children go to school," said Fu Rugang, a rural migrant worker at Chongqing Donglin coal mine.
China has more than 120 million migrant workers, mostly farmers from west China seeking work in east China's boom towns. They mainly work in construction, mining, cleaning and catering industries, or the kind of jobs usually labeled "dirty", "heavy", "hard" and "exhausting."
Discrimination and prejudice against migrant workers were still common among urban Chinese, and news organizations reported frequent infringements of their rights, such as unpaid wages, said Sun Yuanming, a research fellow with the Chongqing Municipal Academy of Social Sciences.
He proposed extending the welfare routinely offered to urban residents to include migrant workers.
The number of migrant workers is steadily rising, prompting China's legislature and government to consider improving their welfare conditions, health care and education rights.
The government and city administrators have been gradually easing unreasonable restrictions on migrant farmer workers in recent years.
In Chongqing, one of the major source areas for migrant workers, a statute on safeguarding their rights and interests took effect in June 2005, the first of its kind in China. It states that migrant farmer workers are entitled to free job counseling, legal aid and free immunizations for their children.
Since September 2004, Beijing has included migrant farmer workers into the social insurance system.
In 2003, Premier Wen Jiabao pledged to help migrant workers retrieve unpaid wages during his inspection of the rural areas of Chongqing after a housewife complained that wages of her husband were always in arrears.
Some observers have said bias against migrant farmer workers comes fundamentally from political discrimination. But in March this year, the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, adopted a resolution providing for rural migrant worker representatives in the national parliament for next year's session, which was viewed as a major step for China's political reform.
"The establishment of Rural Migrant Workers Day in Chongqing shows the city's respect for the disadvantaged, and I think it may influence the policy making in other Chinese cities," said Li Yong, another research fellow from the Chongqing Municipal Academy of Social Sciences.
Source: Xinhua
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