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Despite government efforts, many migrant workers are still not receiving their pay promptly, or are having unreasonable reductions made from their wages, according to a survey by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Of the nearly 30,000 workers surveyed, 20 percent said they had had wages unreasonably deducted or defaulted. In extreme cases, some workers did not get their pay until eight years after they had finished the work.

On average, wages for migrant workers are usually delayed by four months.

Premier Wen Jiabao's personal intervention in the case of an unpaid rural laborer in October 2003 underlined the seriousness of the issue. And since then campaigns have been launched nationwide to help rural workers claim their stalled wages.

The extreme case of migrant laborer Wang Binyu, who killed four people in a frenzy after failing to receive his defaulted wage in May of 2005, serves as a stark warning of the possible fall-out of wage disputes dragged out without reaching a satisfactory conclusion.

The fact that the murderer had appealed to a local court and labor department for help before he lost control suggests that a mechanism must be established to provide migrant workers with a channel to lodge complaints about defaulted payments.

The mechanism must ensure the relevant departments address complaints in a timely and effective manner.

To be frank, governments at various levels have already made great efforts to address the problem.

Beijing Higher People's Court released a document in May, explicitly stipulating that cases involving defaulted wages for migrant workers must be dealt with in a timely manner, and its lower courts are required to try the cases without charging rural laborers.

The most important part of the document is the stipulation that courts must accept cases involving labourers who do not have employment contracts with their employers as long as they can provide evidence of their employment.

This is of great significance because more than 40 percent of the workers surveyed do not have contracts. If the rest of the country follows Beijing's example, this group of workers will be able to use legal means to fight for their defaulted wages.

At a meeting on the issue in June, Vice-Premier Zeng Peiyan called for even greater efforts to clear up the migrant workers defaulted payments issue before the coming Spring Festival, which falls on February 18 next year.

The NBS has proposed that trade unions may get involved in safeguarding the legal rights of migrant workers.

(China Daily October 27, 2006)