Beijing has recruited 44,000 volunteers to provide services at venues of the September 6-17 Paralympic Games, an organizer said on Thursday.

The volunteers came from 27 countries and regions, and 90 percent of them had served at Beijing Olympic Games, said Liu Jian, director of the volunteers department of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG).

All of them had received training over the past three years, especially on how to serve the disabled, Liu said.

"We dispatched them to rehabilitation centers in the city to offer services, to learn to better communicate with the disabled and improve their service skills," he said.

Statistics with Liu's department show more than 1.1 million people submitted applications to volunteer for the Olympics during the recruitment period from August 28, 2006, to March 31 this year. More than 900,000 of them also applied to work for the Paralympics.

Beijing recruited more than 74,000 volunteers to provide services at venues, the Olympic Village and media centers of the August 8-24 Olympic Games, with the oldest aged 87. They came from 98 countries and regions.

BOCOG had also recruited 400,000 "city volunteers" to offer information services, translation and first aid at 550 temporary volunteer stations around the capital.

In addition to the Olympic volunteers directly serving the Games and the "city volunteers", BOCOG organized 1 million "social volunteers" to offer services, such as maintaining traffic order and public order at communities and townships.

"During the Paralympics, the city volunteers and social volunteers will continue to offer services, as they have done during Olympics," Liu said.

(Xinhua News Agency August 29, 2008)