The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, will send five groups of lawmakers to check how the rights of factory employees are protected in Liaoning, Zhejiang, Hubei and Yunnan provinces, as well as Inner Mongolia and Shanghai.

The legislators will see whether the Law on Trade Unions has been well implemented by local companies in these areas, and they will pay special attention to the rights of rural labors working in cities.

The NPC has also entrusted 11 other municipalities, provinces and autonomous regions to look into the issue, sources said Monday.

Wang Zhaoguo, vice chairman of the NPC Standing Committee and president of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, stressed that a major task in this regard is to safeguard trade unions' role in protecting workers' rights and benefits according to law.

Addressing the first full-member meeting of the groups Monday, Wang reiterated the Party's consistent policy to depend on the working class wholeheartedly, saying the examination of the local work on implementation of the Law on Trade Unions is to ensure the policy is carried out to the letter.

Apart from the protection of workers' rights, lawmakers will also focus the examination on factory employees' participation in the transformation of state-owned enterprises into joint-stock companies, and the timely payment of salary, working conditions and safety measures of non-state enterprises, including foreign-funded ventures and private companies.

There have been frequent reports from around China about violations of worker's rights, such as delayed payments of salary, negligence of industrial safety, and prevention of workers from exercising their democratic rights.

(Xinhua News Agency August 31, 2004)