The Ministry of Labor and Social Security said priority will be
given this year to giving workers' compensation insurance to
millions of migrant workers in construction, mining and other
sectors where employees are at higher risk of being injured on the
job.
The practice, to protect migrant workers' rights, will be expanded
to all sectors in the future.
Chen Gang, a departmental director of the ministry, said the
government's efforts to expand an occupational injury insurance
system will offer laborers or their kin fair compensation if they
are injured or killed while working.
Chen said migrant workers who suffer job-related injuries in those
sectors often find themselves in a hopeless position when their
employers refused to pay compensation for severe injury, disease or
loss of life.
Employers will be expected to pay workers' compensation premiums
and tell their employees about the policy.
The insurance will cover various types of injuries, including
casualties suffered during business trips, vehicle accident
injuries occurring on the way to or back from work, as well as
injuries incurred during emergency operations undertaken to protect
state or public interests.
He
said all employers in the designated sectors will be required to
buy the insurance for farmers-turned-employees if they signed labor
contracts, or face punishment.
Zhu Changyou, a labor expert with the Beijing Bureau of
International Labor Organizations, praised the move to protect the
rights and interests of underprivileged migrant workers.
Together with existing measures -- such as pensions, medical
insurance, maternity insurance and unemployment insurance -- the
new workers' compensation insurance is expected to help create a
more reliable working environment and better protect residents'
interests, Zhu said.
Official reports indicate that there are now 130 million migrant
workers in Chinese cities, almost equivalent to half the population
of the United States.
This means that the country has more migrant than stationary
workers, and that they constitute the main industrial workforce.
This is a reversal of the situation that existed two decades
ago.
"A
comprehensive social security system will play an important role in
strengthening China's economic development, maintaining social
stability and protecting workers' rights," said Zhu.
The issue has become extremely important as job-related accidents
claim more than 100,000 lives in China every year and injure
several hundred thousand people.
Wang Xianzheng, director of the State Administration for Safe
Production Supervision, said the trend was worsening as the numbers
of China's occupational accidents have soared in recent years.
"The new system will be a much fairer and more effective way for
employees and employers to deal with health hazards," said
Wang.
The new system, which was started in the late 1990s on a trial
basis in several cities, now covers a total of 45 million employees
nationwide.
"But it is far from our goal, which is to cover all the employees
in the country," said Wang.
Wang said commercial insurance services, including foreign
companies, could also be allowed to join the queue for a stake in
the industrial injury market.
(China Daily July 26, 2004)
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