To better boost employment and ensure social security for laborers and laid-off workers, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security has set six key tasks on building a social security system as the followings:
Establish municipal, district and community-level public employment agencies in all large and middle-size cities and qualified smaller cities. Employment information exchange should then be easily accessed, progressively, in 100 large cities throughout the network.
Fine tune requirements and streamline paperwork procedures for the laid-off and unemployed laborers and further clarify and improve preferential reemployment policies.
Hammer out training subsidy measures to provide free reemployment training. National Self-employment Demonstration Bases will be set up in qualified cities to facilitate the laid-off and unemployed laborers to engage in self-run small business.
Enforce unemployment insurance. Qualified unemployed laborers who run out of their unemployment insurance after a period of unemployment should be protected by the urban minimum living standard security system.
Encourage laborers, especially self-employed and flexible-working laborers, to join social insurance schemes.
Take measures to help laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises to join basic medical insurance schemes after they are reemployed as part-time and seasonal workers.
(China.org.cn by Alex Xu, August 22, 2003)
