More than 1,300 migrant workers employed by a Hong Kong-based property developer have suffered from overdue wages, poor living conditions and other forms of mistreatment, a human rights organization has claimed.

The Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) said on Sunday its claims were based on interviews with 1,301 migrant workers - 13 percent of the total number of workers of New World China Land (NWCL) - in seven mainland cities between July and December.

"The workers were only allowed to borrow 300 yuan (US$44) to 500 yuan as cost of living from the labor contractors each month. That is only 10 to 20 percent of their deserved salary," the SACOM report said.

However, NWCL denied the allegations, saying it had always treated its employees well and in fact stresses on protection of their welfare and safety.

"The company does not allow contractors to violate the workers' interest. We have received the report and will carry out our investigations," the NWCL said in a statement to China Daily.

SACOM has accused NWCL of subcontracting its projects to many unqualified contractors. "About 95 percent of its (NWCL) workers have not signed labor contracts and are not insured," the report said.

Qiu Zihui, a spokeswoman of SACOM said: "It's much worse than what we have seen before. It's even worse than Nine Dragon."

SACOM carried out a similar research on Nine Dragon Paper Ltd, a paperboard supplier, last year and exposed the company's unsafe working conditions, poor welfare and its practice of imposing unreasonable fines on its workers.

The latest SACOM report said that workers at a NWCL construction site in Wuhan, Hubei province were "seriously overworked". The operating hours of the site in July surpassed 560 hours, it said.

An anonymous worker at a construction site in Guangzhou was quoted in the report as having said: "I do not like signing contracts and I don't know what a contract is."

Peng Yan'e, a director of the labor and social security bureau of Wuhan, said yesterday that property developers tend to subcontract the projects to many construction contractors.

"But the precondition for subcontracting is that contractors must have valid construction licenses and must sign contracts with the workers."

If that is not the case, the developer must take the responsibility, said Peng.

Shen Chonglin, a sociology researcher of migrant workers from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the report reflected a "big and traditional problem".

"The sub-contracting of building projects makes it hard to figure out who is responsible for workers' rights," he said.

(China Daily January 6, 2009)