'Excellent' migrant workers get Shanghai hukou

• Source: Global Times
• [08:09 June 26 2009]
• Comments

By Wen Ya

Li Ying cries after receiving her Shanghai hukou certificate Wednesday. Photo: Shao Jianping

Li Ying, a sanitation worker from Jiangsu Province, was so happy to be given a hukou for Shanghai Wednesday she burst into tears in the police station.

Li – who has worked in the city for the past 10 years – was among a group of 40 “National Excellent Migrating Workers” to be given the household registration certificates for the thriving city.

The municipal government announced a plan to give out the certificates on June 17, the Shanghai Evening Post reported yesterday.

Last year, Li was awarded a National Labor Medal, Shen Zhonghe, director of the Zhabei Talent Service Center, was quoted as saying.

“We will put Li’s hukou in safekeeping for the time being, as she doesn’t own a house in the city or have any relatives here,” he said.

Across the country, 1,000 people were named National Excellent Migrating Workers last year.

The award means that they are qualified to receive a hukou for the city or town in which they work, according to a document released jointly by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the Ministry of Public Security in November.

Twenty-one of the award-winners in Shanghai have collected their certificates.

“I was so happy to receive my Shanghai hukou and identity card last month,” Zhu Xueqin, a Jiangsu native who has worked in Shanghai for more than 14 years, said.

“Giving these workers hukou is like a kind of encouragement for them and their children to contribute to the city,” Wang Sixin, an associate law professor at the Communication University of China, told the Global Times yesterday.

“The program will definitely help reduce the differences between rural and urban identities to some degree, but it can’t solve the problem completely,” he said.