Demand for domestic helpers in Shenzhen, a boomtown facing Hong Kong across a river in south China's Guangdong Province, is placed at 120,000, said information from Domestic Service Association of the city.

A survey carried out by the association over some 300 home service companies shows the shortage of nannies is no longer only felt around major festive seasons of a year, but all year round, so 40 percent of domestic service companies in the city are obliged to shut down.

"Shortage of human resources has become more and more serious since early last year," said Chen Jiyu, head of the association. Because of the shortage, seven of the eight domestic service companies surveyed in Buxin Neighborhood, Luohu District, for instance, closed down.

Some 70 percent of domestic helpers in Shenzhen used to come from Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, a close neighbor of Guangdong, but in recent years, there have been a tendency that a growing number of people in Guangxi and other interior areas such as Hunan, Jiangxi and Henan could easily find jobs near their homes because of economic growth in their respective regions, so the aspiration of finding employment in Shenzhen is not so strong, said Wan Mengping, deputy head of the association.

Wan also cited low pay and longer hours as two other reasons that make many laborers preferred working in other sectors of businesses instead of domestic service work.

Shenzhen, which was a tiny fishing village in southern Guangdong Province until it was named China's first special economic zone in 1980, has a population of around 7 million and serves as a gateway to the prosperous Pearl River Delta region. It is now one of the country's leading foreign trade players and a base for export-oriented processing business.

(Xinhua News Agency January 24, 2005)