During the Chinese New Year holidays, some rural migrant workers cannot afford train tickets to return to their home village to celebrate one of the most important festivals in China.

On 27 January, two days before the first day of the Chinese New Year, the Nanjing Morning Post carried a story about 19 rural migrant workers who could not afford to buy train tickets to go home and did not have money to rent any rooms. Instead, they slept at the tomb of a princess in Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and two of the workers even slept beside the stone coffin.

Some of the workers were not able to get back their unpaid wages from their employers, while some only earned meagre wages that they could not afford even to buy the train tickets to return their home village to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

Li Shaolung, 21, who came from Yangxin County in Hubei Province and one of the two migrant workers who slept next to the coffin, said he was scared of the environment inside the tomb, but he had no other option. Another worker is 21-year-old Li Yulung who came from Heze City in Shandong.

Li Shaolung said he came to work in Nanjing early last year and had worked for several job with little income that he could barely make ends meet. He had been jobless since December 2005 and he had used up all his money by 20 January.

The other 17 workers were so scared that they only slept on the corridor outside the tomb. They said that they met one another at the Andemen Migrant Workers' Market. They were also so poor that they did not have money to find a place to stay, so they decided to sleep outside the tomb together. They had slept there for five nights already, according to the Nanjing Morning Post.

Li Ming, who came from Jinan City in Shandong and one of the workers who slept on the corridor outside the tomb, said he became so poor all because of his labour contractor. He recalled that he met a man who claimed to be a labour contractor from Henan Province at the Andemen Migrant Workers' Market in October last year. The man took him to a house in Jiangning Development Zone in Nanjing and promised to give him 2,000 yuan after he had completed the decoration work at the house in two months. Two months later, when he went to ask for the wages from the employer, who only told him that he had already given the money to the labour contractor. But Li Ming could not find the labour contractor ever since. He said he was ashamed of going home without a penny. He tried to find a job at daytime and slept outside the tomb at night, hoping that he would be able to get some money to buy something to eat.

Other workers also had similar experiences. They all said that they would spent their Chinese New Year at the tomb – going out to find jobs at daytime and sleeping at the tomb at night.

Migrant workers who come from rural area to find jobs in the cities always suffer from wage arrears. Government estimates of wages owed to migrant workers range as high as 100 billion yuan (US$12.1 billion) in 2005. A recent survey ordered by the National People's Congress also found that 7.8 percent of the workers at the 2,000 companies interviewed were owed wage arrears averaging 2,184 yuan per person – which accounted for more than three months' wages.

Source: Nanjing Morning Post (27 January 2006), Xinhua News Agency (29 December 2005)

10 February 2006