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Tuesday 31 March 2009
Guangdong to change system for migrants
Guangdong will overhaul its decade-old temporary-residential-permit system, which has been accused of discriminating against migrant workers, Xinhua reported yesterday.
Guangdong will overhaul its decade-old temporary-residential-permit system, which has been accused of discriminating against migrant workers, Xinhua reported yesterday.
According to draft management regulations for migrants, references to the “temporary-residential licence” would be scrapped and replaced by a “residential licence”, a change that would grant migrants more rights and benefits in the province, the report said.
It said that under the new system, migrants would have access to nine new “rights”, including social insurance, non-profit vocational training and legal aid.
But the draft also said that it was the responsibility of lower-level authorities to work out how those objectives would be met.
The draft had been submitted to the standing committee of the Guangdong’s People’s Congress, Xinhua reported yesterday. A source close to the congress said the committee generally took about two months to consider and adopt any new regulation.
Zheng Zizhen, a labour expert at the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences, said that it was hard to assess the significance of the new regulations without having read the final version.
But based on the Xinhua report, he said it was good to hear that the new version had at least specified migrants’ rights.
“It will be much easier for officials to follow the instructions, and the migrants to ask for their rights in the future,” he said. “It sounds like a simple handbook.”
Professor Zheng said that since there were big economic gaps among different cities in Guangdong, it was reasonable for the provincial government to let the lower-level administrations handle the details in their areas.
But he suggested the provincial government should monitor lower-level governments, which could use various excuses to not follow the instructions.
“They can say: ‘We do not have enough money’ and then do nothing, which will make the new rules meaningless,” Professor Zheng said.
Guangdong’s existing migrant-management regulations took effect in March 1999.
Provincial authorities have admitted that the system has failed to solve some of the problems caused by the influx of migrants and has lagged behind more recent policies issued by the central government.
As one of the mainland’s major economic engines and a world-renowned centre of manufacturing, Guangdong has the country’s biggest migrant population, numbering more than 30 million, or one-third of the nation’s total.
The province has had to confront more frequent unrest in the absence of effective means to administer and manage the extraordinary number of temporary residents.
A study conducted by provincial public security authorities found that in the past two years more than 70 per cent of the suspects caught by police in the province were migrants.
Migrants were also a driving force in big protests in the province in the past two years, including a taxi drivers’ strike in Guangzhou by Hunan natives.
1 comment:
Guangdong to change system for migrants
Ivan Zhai
31 March 2009
Guangdong will overhaul its decade-old temporary-residential-permit system, which has been accused of discriminating against migrant workers, Xinhua reported yesterday.
According to draft management regulations for migrants, references to the “temporary-residential licence” would be scrapped and replaced by a “residential licence”, a change that would grant migrants more rights and benefits in the province, the report said.
It said that under the new system, migrants would have access to nine new “rights”, including social insurance, non-profit vocational training and legal aid.
But the draft also said that it was the responsibility of lower-level authorities to work out how those objectives would be met.
The draft had been submitted to the standing committee of the Guangdong’s People’s Congress, Xinhua reported yesterday. A source close to the congress said the committee generally took about two months to consider and adopt any new regulation.
Zheng Zizhen, a labour expert at the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences, said that it was hard to assess the significance of the new regulations without having read the final version.
But based on the Xinhua report, he said it was good to hear that the new version had at least specified migrants’ rights.
“It will be much easier for officials to follow the instructions, and the migrants to ask for their rights in the future,” he said. “It sounds like a simple handbook.”
Professor Zheng said that since there were big economic gaps among different cities in Guangdong, it was reasonable for the provincial government to let the lower-level administrations handle the details in their areas.
But he suggested the provincial government should monitor lower-level governments, which could use various excuses to not follow the instructions.
“They can say: ‘We do not have enough money’ and then do nothing, which will make the new rules meaningless,” Professor Zheng said.
Guangdong’s existing migrant-management regulations took effect in March 1999.
Provincial authorities have admitted that the system has failed to solve some of the problems caused by the influx of migrants and has lagged behind more recent policies issued by the central government.
As one of the mainland’s major economic engines and a world-renowned centre of manufacturing, Guangdong has the country’s biggest migrant population, numbering more than 30 million, or one-third of the nation’s total.
The province has had to confront more frequent unrest in the absence of effective means to administer and manage the extraordinary number of temporary residents.
A study conducted by provincial public security authorities found that in the past two years more than 70 per cent of the suspects caught by police in the province were migrants.
Migrants were also a driving force in big protests in the province in the past two years, including a taxi drivers’ strike in Guangzhou by Hunan natives.
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