China News Service, Kunming, December 7th (Zhao Shuyong) - I learned from Yunnan Provincial Department of Labor and Social Security today that Zhaotong City, one of the main areas with mountainous agricultural population in Yunnan, has cumulatively transferred and dispatched 11.245 million rural labor forces this year, generating a migrant worker income of 9 billion yuan. Labor dispatch has become a major highlight of economic growth in this region.
According to reports, at the beginning of this year, Zhaotong formulated a plan for transferring rural labor force. As of now, it has cumulatively transferred and dispatched 11.245 million rural labor forces, an increase of 2.45 percentage points over the previous year; the total wage income of farmers reached 9 billion yuan, increasing by 18.54% compared to last year. This not only realized full re-employment of migrant workers who returned home last winter and this spring, but also achieved dual growth in rural population transfer and income from migrant work.
Affected by the global financial crisis, the labor economy faced unprecedented challenges, with 500,000 returning migrant workers in Zhaotong last winter and this spring. To stabilize the channels for transferring rural labor force and ensure effective income increase for farmers, Zhaotong proposed the "three one-thirds" population transfer goal. The city secured a total of 14.9 million yuan for poverty-stricken area labor transfer training and the demonstration base for labor transfer training in poor areas of Yunnan Province. At the same time, the municipal government allocated 1.2 million yuan of special funds to establish 11 new township training night schools across the city. Since the beginning of the year, the city has trained a cumulative total of 1.351 million people, including 513,000 people receiving skills training and 838,000 people receiving migrant worker training.
Zhaotong is known as the "throat of Western Sichuan and the key to southern Yunnan". It is located at the intersection of the socio-economic development radiation from major cities such as Kunming, Chengdu, Guiyang, and Chongqing. It is situated in the core area of the "Panzhihua-Liupanshui Economic Development Zone" planned by the state, acting as the northern gateway of Yunnan and the convergence point of the economies and cultures of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guizhou provinces. For a long time, due to natural, geographical, and over-development reasons, the ecological environment here has been continuously deteriorating, severely restricting socio-economic development. "A large number of people survive under extremely harsh conditions and resource scarcity. If they cannot be effectively transferred out, Zhaotong's development will never have a way out," emphasized Bai Enpei, Secretary of the Yunnan Provincial Party Committee during his research in Zhaotong. He stressed that population transfer is the fundamental way out for Zhaotong's sustainable development.