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)