The increasing number of farmers from the populous Sichuan and
Hunan provinces who rush south to Guangdong Province to find jobs
are exerting heavy pressure on trains, a railway official said on
Friday.
Nearly 300,000 passengers arrived Friday in the Pearl River
Delta in Guangdong, a southern province that borders Hong Kong,
according to Ding Liang, an official with the Guangzhou Railway
Corporation Group.
Usually fewer than 100,000 passengers arrive every day in the
region.
In the past four days, the group added 165 seasonal trains to
carry passengers from
Sichuan in Southwest China and
Hunan and
Henan in Central China to
Guangdong, Ding told China Daily.
The distance between Guangdong, a magnet for job thirsty farmers
elsewhere because of its economic strength, and these provinces is
more than 1,000 kilometers, and the train is the most popular means
of travel.
In Sichuan, more than 7 million local farmers, or 10 per cent of
the province's total population, work outside the province each
year, half of them in Guangdong. About 4 million people from Hunan
work in Guangdong each year.
According to the tradition, Chinese people, especially farmers,
usually enjoy
Spring Festival for 15 days. This year's festival started on
January 29.
"We hope to find good jobs in Guangdong by getting there
earlier," said farmer Huang Yongguang, who is from Changsha,
Hunan's capital.
Chengdu Daily, in Sichuan's capital, reported on Friday that the
number of traveling farmers increased by 40 per cent compared with
the same period of last year.
Local officials in charge of exporting farmers to Guangdong
hired chartered coaches to transport farmers from their home towns
to Chengdu Railway Station, the report said.
In Guangzhou, Guangdong's capital, labor-intensive factories
such as those making shoes held job fairs in front of railway
stations to attract migrant workers.
(China Daily February 4, 2006)