The Ministry of Public Security is to establish a database of the country's migrant population and help develop a comprehensive management platform covering their employment, housing and family status, it said yesterday.

The database, to be finished by the end of 2009, will be deal mostly with temporary residencies in the city. The platform, which has yet to be given a timetable, will be set up with other government departments to better manage migrant workers and offer them better services, a statement posted on the ministry's website said.

Currently, the population is divided into rural and non-rural households. If rural dwellers move to the city they have to register for temporary residency.

However, the country has no database of these registrations, nor does it have a comprehensive management and service system for migrants.

The 2005 National Population Sample Survey showed the migrant population was about 150 million, 2.96 million more than in 2000.

A National Population and Family Planning Commission report released in January said rural areas still had a surplus labor force of 150 to 170 million, and they would continue to shift to cities, putting pressure on the urban infrastructure, public services and government administration.

Although migrant workers are an irreplaceable force in the country's modernization, they have also caused public security problems. Ministry figures show 41.2 percent of those held in criminal cases last year were migrants.

"Under these circumstances, we must better manage and serve the migrant people," vice minister of Public Security Liu Jinguo was quoted as saying in the statement.

Li Wanjun, director of Beijing's migrant population management office, said managing migrants had become a complicated issue concerning social development, public administration and service.

"A comprehensive system involving the public security, social security, family planning and construction authorities is needed," he said.

Official figures show that by the end of June, the population in the capital had reached 17 million, of which 5 million were migrants.

The ministry also called for simplified procedures for migrants to get their temporary residency permits.

In addition, it urged local police to crack down on crimes that often target migrants, in particular trafficking and slave labor.

Preliminary figures from the ministry show that since 2002, there have been about 450,000 criminal cases nationwide whose victims were migrants.

The latest scandal was in north China's Shanxi Province in June, where police freed 359 slave laborers in illegal brick kilns, including 15 children.

(China Daily August 21, 2007)