Migrants 'losing out on benefits'
Source: Xinhua |
March 28, 2011, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
CHINA'S rural migrants are losing out on the benefits - from health care to education - of the country's rapid urbanization drive, despite their remarkable contribution to it, a senior agricultural official has said.
Chen Xiwen, vice director of the Leading Group on Rural Work of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, told a Shanghai forum yesterday that although an army of people had moved to the cities to work and live in recent years, they were not being treated as city dwellers.
Nearly half of China's population - some 630 million people - lived in urban areas in 2010, according to official statistics, and the number of urban residents has grown approximately 37 percent over the past 20 years.
Experts said the calculation includes 285 million rural migrants who do not have an urban hukou, or household registration. They have little access to education, social welfare and other rights and benefits that come with the registration.
Many migrant workers have to return to the countryside to retire, raise children or treat illnesses as their limited pensions are not enough to cover the cost of living in cities.
The current two-tier hukou system was first introduced by the government in the 1950s to restrict population flow.
The system has been revised since then, but experts have called for further changes to end discrimination against rural migrants in cities.
Chen said the development of infrastructure in Chinese cities has far outpaced the development of benefits for urban dwellers, and it has become a pressing issue.
The government will "make up the missed lessons" of full urbanization, he said.
Yang Weimin, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planning body, told the forum that the government is considering granting urban household registration to rural migrants who have a stable income and have been living in cities for a certain number of years.
Yang said the government will also find ways to extend social welfare to those who do not qualify at present.
Chen Xiwen, vice director of the Leading Group on Rural Work of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, told a Shanghai forum yesterday that although an army of people had moved to the cities to work and live in recent years, they were not being treated as city dwellers.
Nearly half of China's population - some 630 million people - lived in urban areas in 2010, according to official statistics, and the number of urban residents has grown approximately 37 percent over the past 20 years.
Experts said the calculation includes 285 million rural migrants who do not have an urban hukou, or household registration. They have little access to education, social welfare and other rights and benefits that come with the registration.
Many migrant workers have to return to the countryside to retire, raise children or treat illnesses as their limited pensions are not enough to cover the cost of living in cities.
The current two-tier hukou system was first introduced by the government in the 1950s to restrict population flow.
The system has been revised since then, but experts have called for further changes to end discrimination against rural migrants in cities.
Chen said the development of infrastructure in Chinese cities has far outpaced the development of benefits for urban dwellers, and it has become a pressing issue.
The government will "make up the missed lessons" of full urbanization, he said.
Yang Weimin, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planning body, told the forum that the government is considering granting urban household registration to rural migrants who have a stable income and have been living in cities for a certain number of years.
Yang said the government will also find ways to extend social welfare to those who do not qualify at present.
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