When Zhou Dailan fell from the fourth floor of an apartment building while cleaning her employer's windows two months ago, she sparked a public debate over the social security status of the thousands of rural women working in the city as housemaids.

Zhou could not afford the medical expenses that her injuries entailed, arousing widespread media coverage and public concern at the plight of domestic workers.

Despite her injuries, Zhou, a 41-year-old peasant woman from Anhui Province, said she was happy the Shanghai government was finally going to "do something" for rural workers like herself.

Under a new social security scheme, the city will encourage all rural housemaids working for urban Shanghai families to buy personal insurance for 30 yuan (US$3.60) a year. This will provide up to 100,000 yuan (US$12,050) in case of an injury, the municipal labor and social security bureau announced Thursday.

Shanghai-based intermediary services that employ rural women and send them to work as domestic helpers have to buy the insurance for the employees before entering into employment contracts, a bureau official explained.

Shanghai families in search of a housemaid can check beforehand whether the candidate has bought the personal insurance. The employer will either be required to buy insurance or share the risk if they want to hire someone without coverage.

The bureau has joined with several insurers in Shanghai to offer more outlets in communities where housemaids and their employers can conveniently pay the premium.

It is the first time the municipality has included domestic helpers in its social security program. The new scheme is expected to benefit over 100,000 people.

Shanghai became the first Chinese area to offer social security services to transient workers in September 2002, when the city issued regulations demanding employers offer life, medical and personal insurance and pension programs to rural workers.

Domestic helpers working in Shanghai, however, were not among the beneficiaries.

These rural women are either hired by the urban families through a very simple, often oral, labor contract, or work through an intermediary service. The labor contracts between the housemaids and their employers are largely based on mutual trust and the country's labor law does not apply in case of a dispute.

Zhou Dailan suffered from abdominal hemorrhage, a ruptured spleen and lumbar fractures when she fell from the building in late December.

Her employers, an elderly couple who were not very well off themselves, managed to pay 20,000 yuan (US$2,400), half of Zhou's medical bills, to finance the spleen removal and liver treatment that saved her life. Neither Zhou's family nor her employers could afford any further treatment.

Lumbar surgery was carried out in early February, with donations from citizens and exemption from many expenses by a Shanghai-based hospital for bone diseases.

"Zhou Dailan is quite lucky," said one Shanghai resident. "But there are hundreds of thousands of other housemaids in this city, all honest, hardworking and vulnerable to similar mishaps. It's high time to build a comprehensive social welfare system for this group."

Since China started transforming to a market economy in the late 1970s, a growing number of peasants have left their rural hometowns for cities to do odd jobs or start a business. Problems then emerged as the migrants, who amounted to 94 million by September 2003, were denied equal access to work, education, housing and other social rights.

Having woken up to the issue, the government is working hard to protect the rights and interests of transient workers by demanding timely and full payment of their wages and helping them to solve various problems, such as offering their children equal access to schools and registering them as local residents.

Yuan Chongfa, vice president of the China Center for Town Reform and Development, said there was still a long way to go to reform the system, which would facilitate the development of a market economy and mark greater social progress in ensuring equal civil rights.

(Xinhua News Agency March 15, 2004)