Measures to facilitate new generation influx

• Source: Global Times
• [02:51 February 02 2010]
• Comments

By Huang Jingjing

About 100 million migrant workers born after the 1980s will enjoy more financial support, occupational training and other help, a senior official said in Beijing Monday.

This group, dubbed the "new generation," accounts for 60-percent of the country's total number of migrant workers, of which there were 152 million by the end of last year.

Kang Renjian, deputy director of the office of the central leading group on rural work, said at a press conference that the younger workers are eager to be in urban areas.

"But the urban areas have not fully prepared to receive them, which has posed a great challenge to us," Chen Xiwen, the office director, told the Xinhua News Agency Sunday.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued a document outlining measures to narrow the gap between urban and rural areas Sunday.

Kang said the major task for the office is to facilitate the movement of these workers into the cities or to help them develop careers in their hometowns.

"First, we will accept more qualified migrant workers to be permanent urban residents," Kang said.

Urban resident registration criteria vary among local governments. The main conditions include the number of years the migrant workers have lived in the city and if they have a stable job.

Kang said efforts would be made to protect the rights of migrant workers.

"We will strengthen employment services, skills training, social insurance and child education services for them," Kang said.

The government will expand the scope of the Sunshine Project, a training program launched in 2004 to train farmers for employment in urban areas.