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Farm work is a drag so I'll be a waitress
By Lu Chuanzhong, Pei Jianrong, Zhang Xingjun |
March 2, 2009, Monday
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A MONTH after returning home from a factory job on China's eastern coast, 19-year-old Hu Yanjiao was still struggling to readjust to the life in her hinterland farming village of Gangli, Henan Province.
"I'm not yet used to the idleness here. There's not much farming work or anything to do. I feel a little bored," said Hu.
In the past two years, Hu toiled long hours at a Taiwanese-invested electronics plant making auto GPS in Kunshan City of east China's Jiangsu Province. She quit her job in January.
Hu has been feeling the pinch of global financial crisis since last October, when her factory began to lay off workers. By the time she left, nearly one-fourth of the 400 employees in her section had been fired.
Although she was lucky not to be among them, Hu said her income dropped dramatically as the factory received fewer orders and she no longer was able to work overtime.
"I used to get about 1,200 yuan (US$175) each month and now it's just 500 yuan. So I quit and returned home," she said.
Hu, from Changge County of central Henan Province, is one of the country's 20 million migrant workers left jobless in the wake of the economic downturn in the past few months.
Having been away from home since graduating from a local junior middle school at 16, Hu said she knew nothing about farming and had no intention of learning about it. "I still want a job in the cities," she said.
Donning a fashionable white fur coat and blue jeans, she said she cherished memories of the city life, where off hours were often spent hanging out with friends at shopping malls.
Hu said she was not as pessimistic as people would expect her to be. "A job is not hard to find, anyway, be it in the cities or near my hometown. What I want now is just a better-paid one."
In the past month she checked out several job vacancies in the county seat near her home, but didn't accept any since pay was just around 500 yuan a month. She plans to interview for a job as a waitresses in a Western-style restaurant that pays 700 to 800 yuan.
Short-term training
In Qixian County about 160 km away from Hu's home, laid-off migrant worker Song Zhenzhen was taking classes in Chaoyue Computer School, which offers free short-term skills training to rural job seekers.
The 20-year-old has a story similar to Hu's. After working for two years in a cell phone factory in Dongguan of Guangdong Province, she lost her job last December and returned home.
With a dream of returning to the warm south, she decided to take a three-month training course designed to give trainees an edge in job searching.
Henan Province is a major source of China's estimated 130 million rural migrant workers, and Qixian is one of the province's most important labor source markets, exporting 240,000 migrants to the southern and eastern coasts last year.
However, last January up to 10,000 migrant workers returned home jobless, according to Sun Xiaode, deputy director of the county's labor bureau.
Henan recorded 9.5 million returned migrant workers, 3 million of whom might have difficulty getting new jobs.
The provincial government has leveraged policies, including a government-subsidized project that will retrain 2 million migrants and offering business loans of 1.5 billion yuan to an estimated 100,000, whose businesses are expected to employ about 1 million.
Sun added that of those returning to Qixian, more than half had left for the cities again and about 40 percent were trying to find new jobs near their homes or enroll in training classes. The government offers a subsidy of 400-600 yuan for the short-term training of each migrant worker.
(The authors are writers at Xinhua news agency.)
"I'm not yet used to the idleness here. There's not much farming work or anything to do. I feel a little bored," said Hu.
In the past two years, Hu toiled long hours at a Taiwanese-invested electronics plant making auto GPS in Kunshan City of east China's Jiangsu Province. She quit her job in January.
Hu has been feeling the pinch of global financial crisis since last October, when her factory began to lay off workers. By the time she left, nearly one-fourth of the 400 employees in her section had been fired.
Although she was lucky not to be among them, Hu said her income dropped dramatically as the factory received fewer orders and she no longer was able to work overtime.
"I used to get about 1,200 yuan (US$175) each month and now it's just 500 yuan. So I quit and returned home," she said.
Hu, from Changge County of central Henan Province, is one of the country's 20 million migrant workers left jobless in the wake of the economic downturn in the past few months.
Having been away from home since graduating from a local junior middle school at 16, Hu said she knew nothing about farming and had no intention of learning about it. "I still want a job in the cities," she said.
Donning a fashionable white fur coat and blue jeans, she said she cherished memories of the city life, where off hours were often spent hanging out with friends at shopping malls.
Hu said she was not as pessimistic as people would expect her to be. "A job is not hard to find, anyway, be it in the cities or near my hometown. What I want now is just a better-paid one."
In the past month she checked out several job vacancies in the county seat near her home, but didn't accept any since pay was just around 500 yuan a month. She plans to interview for a job as a waitresses in a Western-style restaurant that pays 700 to 800 yuan.
Short-term training
In Qixian County about 160 km away from Hu's home, laid-off migrant worker Song Zhenzhen was taking classes in Chaoyue Computer School, which offers free short-term skills training to rural job seekers.
The 20-year-old has a story similar to Hu's. After working for two years in a cell phone factory in Dongguan of Guangdong Province, she lost her job last December and returned home.
With a dream of returning to the warm south, she decided to take a three-month training course designed to give trainees an edge in job searching.
Henan Province is a major source of China's estimated 130 million rural migrant workers, and Qixian is one of the province's most important labor source markets, exporting 240,000 migrants to the southern and eastern coasts last year.
However, last January up to 10,000 migrant workers returned home jobless, according to Sun Xiaode, deputy director of the county's labor bureau.
Henan recorded 9.5 million returned migrant workers, 3 million of whom might have difficulty getting new jobs.
The provincial government has leveraged policies, including a government-subsidized project that will retrain 2 million migrants and offering business loans of 1.5 billion yuan to an estimated 100,000, whose businesses are expected to employ about 1 million.
Sun added that of those returning to Qixian, more than half had left for the cities again and about 40 percent were trying to find new jobs near their homes or enroll in training classes. The government offers a subsidy of 400-600 yuan for the short-term training of each migrant worker.
(The authors are writers at Xinhua news agency.)
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