Editorials

The mission possible

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-04 07:48

The task to gradually incorporate farmer-turned-workers as real urban citizens in the cities where they work is not just a step forward to expedite the pace of urbanization. It will be an effort to address the injustice this group of people has long suffered.

The conference on rural and agricultural work that concluded last Monday made it one of the important missions of the central government to incorporate rural migrant workers with permanent jobs into the urban public welfare system. Those who get household registrations as urban citizens will enjoy the same social security as their urban counterparts do.

This good news is long overdue for more than 200 million migrant workers, whose contributions in the past decades have made it possible for the country's economy and urbanization to witness rapid growth.

While it becomes unimaginable for many cities to function without the migrant workers - who transport the garbage, clean the streets, transport and sell vegetables and baby-sit for many white-collar workers - it is unjust to still treat them as outsiders.

A majority of migrant workers have already become a part of cities, which cannot do without them.

However, they are still not urbanites in the real sense. With their hukou (residence household registration) still as rural villagers, they are denied the social security such as housing, health care and education that urban residents enjoy.

Despite continuous efforts by governments at all levels to help them with their life and work, there is still a long way to go before they can see substantial change in the quality of their lives.

Whether they can be treated as equals with their urban counterparts is key to that substantial change.

While local governments will inevitably face financial pressure to incorporate migrant workers with permanent jobs into the urban social security net, that should never be the reason to keep them as second-rate citizens.

As stated by the document adopted in the conference of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the National Development and Reform Commission, along with other government departments, will jointly work on policies in this regard.

We know that it is easier said than done. That is why the wording in the document is vague, merely stating that the policies will accelerate cities with mature conditions to admit migrant workers with permanent jobs into the local urban security net.

We cannot expect 200 million migrant workers will have urban household registrations overnight. It will be a long process. But making things easier and improving their living standards in whatever way the government can are definitely the direction of the State policies in this regard.

This country will hardly realize the goal of becoming moderately prosperous by 2020 without substantially raising the living standards of the 200 million migrant workers and the 500 million villagers in rural areas.

So whatever difficulties we have, we must press ahead to increase the income of villagers and raise the living standards of migrant workers.

(China Daily 01/04/2010 page8)