Northwest China's
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is
encouraging 600,000 herdsmen to settle into jobs or take up farming
in the hope of preserving more of the region's grasslands, the
regional government has said.
By 2010, about 600,000 of the region's 1 million herders are
expected to take up farming or be offered blue-collar jobs, the
regional stock breeding department said in a press release.
It said the move will preserve the local ecology and increase
the income of the formerly nomadic people.
"Overgrazing by livestock is now a universal problem in
Xinjiang," said Zhang Xinshi, an academician with the Chinese
Academy of Sciences and member of a research team on Xinjiang's
ecology and sustained development.
The growing farm product processing and mining industries in
Xinjiang have created more jobs and many county governments have
provided vocational training to prepare herders for jobs on
production lines, according to the regional labor and social
security department.
Fuyun County in Altay Prefecture has trained nearly 20,000
herders as cooks, drivers, mechanics, and electricians.
Along with vocational training, herders in the southern
prefectures of Kashi and Hotan are also learning to speak standard
Mandarin Chinese.
It's all part of a plan to ensure at least one person in each
family has a job within the next five years.
Xinjiang's herders reported a per capita income of 2,737 yuan
(US$354.4) last year, only one third of the average disposable
income of the urban workers, according to the local statistical
bureau.
"A blue-collar job at local factories will pay at least 9,600
yuan (US$1,243.2) a year," said Dilare, a top official in Jiashi
County, Kashi Prefecture. "Experienced workers can make twice that
amount."
Xinjiang has 48 million hectares of grassland, where farms,
industry, and growing urban centers compete for space with the
region's 60 million head of cattle.
(Xinhua News Agency April 29, 2007)
