ˇˇˇˇBEIJING, March 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese lawmakers attending the on-going
annual national legislature session have urged the government to pay more
attention to the sharp shortage of well-trained workers and technicians, or
"senior blue-collars," to boost the manufacturing industry, which has provided
the world market with an increasing number of "made-in-China" products.
ˇˇˇˇSenior workers merely account for 3.5 percent of China's 70 million
industrial workers, compared with the average of 40 percent in developed
countries.
ˇˇˇˇThe lack of skillful workers and technicians has hampered the development
of the manufacturing and processing industries, and the problem has becoming
even more protruding after China's entry into the World Trade Organization.
ˇˇˇˇCurrently, China has some 1 million technicians and senior technicians, but many
of them are old, and there is an urgent need for a large number of senior
blue-collars to meet the requirementsof a booming manufacturing industry in the
country, said Xiong Shengwen, a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC),
the top legislature of China.
ˇˇˇˇSun Jusheng, a NPC deputy and vice-director of the Jiangxi Provincial Statistics Bureau,
said 63 percent of the 44 industrial enterprises in the provincial
capital, Nanchang, are badly in need of senior workers. The situation
is almost the same in such industrial cities as Shanghai, Wuhan and Taiyuan.
ˇˇˇˇStatistics show that China now needs 600,000 operators of numerical control
machine tools. Experts say the demand for skillful workers in China is expected
to grow by 25 percent in thenext few years, with that for technicians and senior
technicians being doubled.
ˇˇˇˇChina's Ministry of Labor and Social Security launched last October a national
program to train highly skilled workers and technicians, aiming at increasing
the proportion of senior workers,technicians and senior technicians to
the total number of skillful workers by 3-5 percentage points in 3-5 years.
ˇˇˇˇMeanwhile, an increasing number enterprises have begun to raise the pay to
senior workers and technicians, in an effort to keep a stable army of
blue-collars. In the First Automobile Works Group, for instance, highly skillful
workers are paid the same as engineers or managers. Enditem
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