The country's work authorities will soon launch a job-training
program to help the unemployed start their own businesses, Labor
and Social Security Vice-Minister Zhang Xiaojian said
yesterday.
The program will operate in 100 cities, and the trainees will
include not only laid-off workers, but also college graduates and
rural migrants, according to the ministry.
The ministry has given the participating cities until next month
to work out implementation plans to allow the program to kick off
within the year.
The program obliges each city to train 1,500 people a year in
the hope that at least half of them can set up their own businesses
within six months and that at least 80 percent of such businesses
will operate for more than a year.
The program draws inspiration from an older job-training program
called the Start and Improve Your Business (SIYB) jointly organized
by the ministry and the International Labor Organization. Of the
760,000 trainees who took part in that program, 60 percent of them
have set up their own businesses and created nearly 2 million
jobs.
The SIYB started in July 2004 and ended yesterday.
Such programs are part of the authorities' efforts to raise
living standards for vulnerable groups, especially the unemployed,
in the country's growing cities.
The monthly minimum living subsidy for urban areas was raised by
15 yuan (US$1.98) earlier last week to cover 22 million low-income
city people.
And by next month, a pilot version of a basic medical insurance
scheme will be launched in 79 major cities. If it proves
successful, the program will benefit more than 200 million urban
residents outside the workforce by 2010.
(China Daily August 13, 2007)
