This city will soon complete its goal of creating a full-time
job for at least one member of every out-of-work family, officials
said.
Shi Juemin, a vice-director of the Shanghai municipal labor and
social security bureau, said the city is on target to offer jobs to
people who are of legal working age and are able to work.
"Members of more than 7,100 jobless families in Shanghai have
found employment, and the remaining 30 families are on a waiting
list," Shi said during an interview on the bureau's online chatting
program. "And they will soon have jobs."
Shi did not give a deadline.
The city's government has launched several job-creation drives
since 1997.
Neighborhoods have set up their own unemployment databases and
offer job ideas to people according to their individual needs. The
unemployed will either be given work according to their
qualifications or will receive job training.
The government has set up training centers, organized job fairs
and guided the unemployed into newly created public sector posts
such as crossing guards, sanitation workers and parking lot or
community security guards.
According to a labor bureau report released earlier this year,
Shanghai's government had "bought" - or created and paid for -
240,000 jobs by the end of last year.
Hiring people as nurses or home care providers for the aged will
have the additional benefit of helping the government deal with the
city's rapidly aging population.
By the end of last year, the city's unemployment rate was 4.4
percent.
And a new law that is in the pipeline is expected to improve
employment services. The law will assign responsibility for
creating employment and forbid discrimination against women and
people with diseases.
"Companies will have to clearly state the salary when hiring
people," Shi said.
And employers will have to be very careful with their
recruitment advertisements. Cheats will be fined.
(China Daily November 20, 2007)