More 600,000 migrant workers turned jobless after quake
Updated: 2008-07-03 19:46
CHENGDU -- Nearly two months after returning home to Sichuan Province following the devastating May 12 earthquake, more than 600,000 migrant workers are now facing the dilemma of what to do for work.
Cui Rusheng, a farmer from the quake-hit Shifang City, sits in the crowded Jinjiang District job market in Chengdu, capital of the southwestern Chinese province, on Wednesday. In front of him, two boards read "driver" and "painter," respectively.
"I quit my job as a driver in a cargo distribution company in Chengdu on the second day of the quake and hurried home."
He considered himself lucky when he found all his family safe, and their house only suffering some damage.
Farmers-turned migrant workers who lost jobs because of home visits, swarmed the largest job market in Chengdu. Liu said he had waited for days without getting a satisfactory offer.
Sichuan is the largest source of migrant workers in western China, with 20 million farmers leaving the fields for city jobs last year. More than 11 million went out of province to take their chances, according to official figures.
The government's investigation found more than 600,000 migrant workers rushed home after the magnitude-8.0 earthquake jolted the province. Many of the bread-earners were pained to see their homeland in ruins, their elders or children killed.
"The earthquake deprived a livelihood for 1.15 million rural people in the province, as the tremors wreaked havoc on their contracted farmland and forests," said Vice Governor Li Chengyu in a recent disaster report.
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