"In view of some current unfair treatment that farmers-turned-workers face, I see every reason for a new law to ensure them equal footing with their urban counterparts," said Wang Yuancheng, an NPC deputy from east China's Shandong Province.

Wang initiated a motion calling for a new law to safeguard the rights and interests of farmers now working in cities. More than 30 NPC deputies have endorsed the motion.

Wang, who was born to a farming family himself, is a self-made man who is now a successful entrepreneur. He has investigated the labor markets in Beijing and in the Shandong Province cities of Tai'an and Jinan.

He said he has seen firsthand that the migrant workers' situations have improved since last year with the revocation of a decades-old regulation that called for compulsory detention and deportation of people without local residence cards, and a move led by Premier Wen Jiabao himself to recover unpaid wages. At least farmers now can walk downtown and no longer feel helpless in the forests of skyscrapers they see, Wang said.

However, Wang noted that many still face problems, such as decent social security and housing to replace the shabby shelters most of them now must live in.

The education of their children also remains a problem, said Xu Jinglong, an NPC deputy from east China's Anhui Province. Some of the children of farmers working in cities have been kept out of school owing to the excessively high costs they face simply because they do not have city residence cards.

Some 9.3 percent of the 20 million children of migrant farmers are dropouts.

Two-thirds of the 87 million people in Zigong, located in southwest China's Sichuan Province, are farmers. Because of limited local agricultural resources, over 6 million of them have left their hometown to work in cities elsewhere in China. In the past several years, they have remitted on average 2.6 billion yuan (US$314 million) each year back to the province. Last year, 73 percent of the increase in net incomes of Zigong farmers came from their work in cities.

The mayor of Zigong, NPC deputy Luo Linshu, said he can do more than just sign a motion to help the workers.

To in recognition of the migrant workers' contribution to local economic development, Luo said the Zigong government is obliged to help safeguard their legitimate rights and interests in the places where they work.

For example, Zigong will dispatch officials to visit its farmers working in such cities as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to see if they can solve some of their problems through intergovernmental talks.

"Many of our farmers working outside want us to help them with governmental intervention in labor disputes in the cities where they work," Luo said.

Total nationwide wages in arrears for migrant farmers is estimated at around 100 billion yuan (US$12.1 billion).

The Zigong government also plans to increase organized training of farmers before they leave for urban jobs. The training should include basic legal information in addition to occupational skills in case the farmers need legal weapons to protect themselves, Luo said.

Major cities that become the second homes of migrant workers are now adopting a friendlier attitude.

NPC deputy and Guangdong Governor Huang Huahua said that Guangdong will adopt a new local regulation especially to safeguard the rights and interests of farmers-turned-workers in the near future.

The regulation includes clauses requiring severe punishment for those failing to pay salaries to farmers on time and in full, establishment of a special fund to ensure that no migrant workers go hungry, and improved education for children, Huang said.

(China Daily March 15, 2004)