China Watch Blog

China Watch Blog has learnt that authorities in South China’s Guangdong province will introduce further measures to meet the demands of migrant workers, following rising unrest in at least two incidents triggered by poor social management.

“One of the key measures will be to introduce more social workers and organizations to participate in the management of social affairs,” Zhu Mingguo, deputy Party chief of Guangdong, was quoted as saying in a China Daily report.

Specifically, every 10,000 people in the booming industrial province will have at least five social organizations to provide public services to them, and social workers will account for about 10 percent of the province’s total population, Zhu said.

Recently, more than 200 migrant workers were involved in a public order incident that was triggered when a pregnant migrant woman and her husband were injured in a dispute with a public security worker in Zengcheng, a suburb of Guangzhou, on June 10. “We had to send more than 2,000 police officers to control the escalating violence,” Zhu said. Five people were given terms in prison for their roles in the incident.

Before this, about 1,000 migrant workers involved in a wage dispute that has already led to the serious injury of a migrant worker gathered in front of a government building in Guxiang township of Chaozhou on June 6, resulting in escalating violence between migrant workers and local people.

Zhu said that aside from encouraging the establishment of more social organizations, more migrant workers will benefit from the government-indexed rating system that aims to set up an easier application procedure for urban residence certificates.

China Watch Blog has learnt that a smoker was convicted for resisting inspectors by the Kwun Tong Magistrates’ Courts. The courts convicted a 42-year-old man for resisting Tobacco Control Inspectors exercising their duty. He was handed a 12-month probation order.

He was also fined $500 each for a smoking offence and failing to produce his identification card. Before the sentence was handed down today, the man had already been remanded in custody for 25 days.

The incident took place in Chuk Yuen Bus Terminus in Wong Tai Sin on December 6, 2010. When the inspectors asked the man to produce his ID card to issue him a fixed-penalty notice for a smoking offence, he pushed an inspectors and attempted to flee. Police later arrested and charged him.

The Department of Health urges the public to observe the smoking-ban requirements and to cooperate with law-enforcement officers. Resisting or using violence on enforcement officers is a serious offence and carries serious legal consequences.