The municipal government of Guangzhou is considering capping the
number of migrant workers it allows into this capital city of south
China's Guangdong Province, to curb the social
problems that have been linked to unchecked immigration.
The cap could limit the industries allowed to hire migrant
workers.
Officials from the municipal government said they were studying
the possibility of capping the influx of migrant workers into the
city, but no details are yet available.
"Guangzhou has long suffered from a poor public security
situation because of burglary, robbery, theft and many other
crimes, many of them committed by the migrant population," said Su
Baoling, a member of the municipal political consultative
conference who is supporting the cap plan.
"Public security in Guangzhou is the worst of China's big
cities."
Official statistics show that of the 100,000 crimes reported
every year during the past five years, roughly 85 per cent ended in
the arrest of a migrant worker. During the same period, the city
recorded about 150,000 social security cases per year.
Cases involving robbery accounted for 61.7 per cent of the
total.
"Many big cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, set limits on
the migrant population and their public security is much better,"
Su said.
"The migrant population needs to compete for jobs and use public
facilities like medical service and public transport. Their
children need schooling, and they tend to have more babies than
what the State's family planning policy allows, which means the
municipal government has to do more to cope with them."
Reliable sources said the migrant population in Guangzhou
exceeds 5 million.
Local residents have welcomed reports of the possible move to
control the spread of migrant workers.
Dong Qixing, who works for a company in the Guangzhou Tianhe
Software Park, said he approved of efforts to better control the
migrant population.
"Public security in Guangzhou is too poor to bear," he said.
"Like several of my colleagues, I had my laptop robbed on my way
home last month. The robber was a drug-addict from Xinjiang."
However, Peng Peng, director of the Guangzhou Academy of Social
Sciences, said it made no sense to limit the migrant population in
Guangzhou.
"A city needs multiple levels of human resources, and migrant
workers end up doing the jobs that local citizens are unwilling to
do," Peng said. "Guangzhou needs a large number of migrant
workers."
"What the government should do is beef up efforts to better
manage the migrant population," the director said.
(China Daily December 19, 2006)