A policy recommendation by a government department in Guangzhou,
capital of Guangdong Province, has triggered a new round of debate
about migrant workers.
Guangzhou's construction committee is reported to be drafting a
policy limiting the influx of a "low-quality" population. Their key
reason was that migrant workers accounted for a big proportion of
the city's troublemakers 80 per cent of criminal suspects and 70
per cent of unlicensed street vendors were reported to be people
who had migrated to the city.
These figures might be true. But they do not justify higher
barriers for migrants coming to live and work in the city.
In fact, almost all the migrant workers are from rural areas
across the country. There has always been a barrier between the
urban and rural worlds in China. The barrier is the residence
permit system, known in Chinese as hukou.
An urban hukou is linked to all kinds of welfare that a rural
hukou holder does not have access to. People from the countryside
do not have pensions, they are not covered by the social security
net of the cities. Even their children have difficulty going to
primary and high schools in the cities.
Despite that, a big labour surplus and a considerably large
urban-rural wealth gap have resulted in steady population movement
from the countryside to the cities.
Looking ahead, facilitating the rural population's movement to
the cities will continue to be a major solution to the problem of
labour redundancy in the countryside.
Migrant workers have actually brought great benefits to the
cities, especially those in coastal areas.
Nobody can deny that the prosperity of the Pearl River Delta can
be attributed, to a large extent, to labour-intensive industries.
These industries, in turn, owe much to migrant workers.
Migrant workers from rural areas will continue to be in demand
because labour-intensive industries will remain significant for the
economy. In addition, the rapidly growing service industries also
mean job opportunities for migrant workers.
Society should make an effort to help these people and
facilitate their assimilation into city life rather than installing
new discriminatory barriers against them.
Those who raised the idea of setting up these barriers should be
aware that poverty and lack of social welfare are often the key
reasons these migrant workers commit crimes. Migrant workers not
receiving their due payment remains a problem.
What is needed are steps to safeguard the rights of migrant
workers and measures to gradually increase their social welfare
levels.
At the moment it is unrealistic to give migrant workers equal
access to the social security net of the cities. But steps should
be taken to build a social security net in the countryside. The
standards can be gradually raised and eventually unified with the
system at work in the cities.
(China Daily December 19, 2006)