Ministry of Justice will issue a series of service standards and appraisal methods to help disadvantaged people seek justice, a ministry official said.

"The standards aim to help standardize the work of legal aid, and to improve the appraisal system on the financial difficulties of people who need such aid," said Zheng Ziwen, director of the professional advice section of the Legal Aid Center under the ministry.

Xin Jianqiang, a farmer working for a Chinese and foreign joint-venture in Beijing, came to the Beijing Legal Aid Center this month in search of better compensation for his industrial injury, the Beijing-based Legal Daily reported Tuesday.

Two years ago, he was hit by a truck and broke 13 ribs while going home from work. While his company arranged industrial injury compensation, they refused to pay him a salary during his recovery period, the newspaper said.

Xin then found out from a newspaper that the center provided legal aid to migrant workers free. He called the center and was told what materials to bring.

Wang Xuefa, the legal aid center's director, said it was important to tell the migrants what materials they needed in advance to streamline the process and save them from traveling back and forth several times.

He said that since 2007 the center had tried to provide packaged and on-the-spot service to migrants and disadvantaged people

Wang added that in the first quarter of this year, the center had handled more than 700 migrant worker lawsuits, a number larger than all of last year. Jia Wuguang, a director of the center, added: "Legal aid organizations have taken active measures to make lawsuits affordable to migrants, and increased the possibility for them to win." He said the ministry was trying to expand legal aid service to the grass-root levels and to form more efficient networks with more convenient service.

Statistics showed that from 2005 to the first six months of 2007, legal aid organizations nationwide had helped 263,489 migrant workers, about 22 percent of the total number of people they had helped, according to the Legal Daily.

(Xinhua News Agency December 19, 2007)