Authorities around China are working to ensure that migrant workers are fully paid before the Chinese Lunar New Year.

These days, more and more migrant workers are rushing back to their hometowns with salaries in their pockets.

Southeast China's Fujian Province has largely finished its work of paying defaulted salaries to migrant workers.

In some other provinces, such as Heilongjiang, Liaoning, and Anhui, an emergency plan has been launched to ensure those workers in the construction and service industries get fully paid.

In Kunshan of the eastern Jiangsu Province, a local regulation rules that construction contractors must make a deposit against their salary liabilities if their project is worth over 500,000 yuan or about US$61,000. This move has yielded great success.

"Ever since the implementation of this rule, no salaries of migrant workers has been deliberately defaulted," said Gu Zhizhong, the chairman of the local trade union.

According to the Ministry of Construction, 98 percent of the total defaulted salaries for construction workers since 2003, have already been paid, which totaled more than US$4 billion.

(CRI January 20, 2005)