China's top leader Hu Jintao urged the governments and Communist
Party of China (CPC) committees at various levels to fully
understand the importance of the reemployment issue and to further
take concrete measures to tackle it.
Hu, president of the state and general secretary of the CPC
Central Committee, made the remarks at a national symposium on
reemployment held here Friday and Saturday.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao presided over the symposium and other
senior leaders Zeng Qinghong, Huang Ju and Li Changchun, all
members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the
CPC Central Committee, attended the symposium.
The leaders reviewed and summed up experience in reemployment
work since last year's national meeting on the same topic and
studied ways to solve existing problems to further promote
reemployment.
Hu said when addressing the symposium that employment and
reemployment of laid-off workers is for the personal interests of
the general masses and the overall situation of reform and
development.
He urged all levels of the Party and government to fully
understand the importance, urgency and long-term presence of the
employment and reemployment issue and do concrete work to
continuously make new progress in this field.
Hu said that since last year's national meeting on reemployment,
the government has enhanced efforts and made much progress. In the
first seven months of this year, 3.7 million people were employed
and 2.1 million laid-off workers were reemployed despite the
negative influence of SARS.
He said that in the present stage and for a long period to come,
China still faces a relatively grave employment situation. Yet
China also possesses a number of favorable conditions to tackle
this issue, including sustained rapid economic growth, improvement
in restructuring sectors of the economy and the creation of various
pro-employment policies.
Hu said the main policies and measures on reemployment have been
laid out and now the key to tackling the issue is to ensure their
implementation.
He urged all levels of the Party and the government to
concentrate on the following fields:
-- Vigorously creating job opportunities. The fundamental
approach of solving the employment and reemployment issue through
promoting development should be always maintained. Labor-intensive
industries and enterprises should be given a boost.
-- Fully implementing incentive policies to encourage
enterprises to absorb laid-off workers and help the laid-off
workers find jobs on their own initiative.
-- Increasing capital input for reemployment.
-- Strengthening professional training of laid-off workers.
-- Further improving services to help laid-off workers find new
jobs.
-- Helping laid-off workers abandon old-fashioned ideas and
choose jobs from a wider field.
-- Ensuring social security for laid-off workers.
Also at the symposium, Premier Wen Jiabao stressed the
importance of always making employment and reemployment a priority
of the Party and the government. He said that governments at
various levels, despite existing difficulties, must strive to
fulfill this year's targets and tasks in this field.
Wen stressed that the key to solving the issues at present is
the concrete implementation of policies and measures already
issued.
He urged leading officials at various levels of the Party and
the government to take charge of employment and reemployment work
and assume the overall responsibility for the work.
(Xinhua News Agency August 17, 2003)
