Fifty-one migrant workers have been elected municipal law makers in Chongqing, the first time in the southwest China city, a local official said yesterday.

They will have their say at the annual session of the local legislature, which is to convene on January 20, representing about seven million migrant workers in Chongqing, one of the largest cities in China, Zhou Bo, a spokesman for the municipal government, said.

They were elected out of 149 candidates in 30 districts and counties of Chongqing, and took up 5.86 percent of the total 870 seats on the local legislative body, the Chongqing Municipal People's Congress.

"They have been given training on how to fulfil their duties as deputies to the Municipal People's Congress," Zhou said.

China has more than 120 million migrant workers, most of them farmers from rural areas. They travel to the cities to work in construction, mining, cleaning and catering industries, or jobs usually labeled "dirty" and "exhausting."

For a long time, they were not represented in local or national legislatures, and discrimination against migrant workers is still common among urban Chinese.

(Xinhua News Agency January 12, 2008)