More than 1,000 inmates signed preliminary employment agreements
with 65 companies at a job fair held at a jail in Changsha, capital
of central China's Hunan
Province on Tuesday.
The job fair, the first of its kind in the province, was
designed to "help the soon-to-be-released prisoners reintegrate
with society," said Liu Wanqing, director of Hunan Prison
Administrative Bureau.
Xiao Tang, 21, who will be released in a few days, signed a job
agreement with a clothing manufacturer in Guangdong
Province.
"I have been here so long that I don't know what employers need
or are looking for anymore," the young woman said. "A job fair like
this really helps me a lot."
Many people, however, are still biased against people newly
released from prison. Many ex-prisoners have no choice but to keep
their criminal records secret when applying for jobs, Liu said.
"The job fair serves as a platform for employers and prisoners
to know more about one another, which helps them to find what they
need. More important, the prisoners need to feel that society
respects and cares for them," Liu added.
"The second point is more important to the prisoners," Liu
said.
The Rongtai Restaurant in Changsha hired 25 waitresses and four
security guards at Tuesday's fair. "Our restaurant promised to give
equal treatment to all our employees, whether or not they had been
in jail," said Miss Zhou, head of human resources at the
restaurant.
All the 28 jails in Hunan run vocational training programs for
prisoners. More than 7,000 inmates have received training since the
province established the first jail focusing on vocational training
in its rehabilitation programs in 2002, Liu said.
"Experience has shown helping rehabilitated prisoners find jobs
effectively keeps them from committing crimes again," Liu said.
Of the 7,000 released prisoners who did receive vocational
training, only four have committed crimes again, Liu said.
The Hunan Prison Administrative Bureau has also set up a website
to provide job information to prisoners and it's deciding if it
should run two job fairs for prisoners a year, Liu said.
About 10,000 prisoners are released from jails each year in
Hunan.
(Xinhua News Agency July 20, 2005)