Quarry workers get new jobs in clean-city push
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Public bicycles ready for use in Wuhu, Anhui province. Bike rental systems have been introduced on a large scale across China, adding an effi cient and green option to the transport mix in cities. [Xinhua] |
Chang Wenyu thought he would be unemployed when the quarry he worked for in a small city in East China was ordered to close this year out of environmental concerns.
The 49-year-old resident of Chaohe township in Rizhao, Shandong province, earned up to 3,600 yuan ($580) a month, almost double the average income in his hometown, since starting at the quarry.
The local government closed it in March, along with a large number of polluting companies in the region, as it tried to get away from the city's environmentally devastating growth mode.
Chang said he expected to live in poverty again.
However, like many others who lost jobs in the government's crackdown on polluters, he was given a job at a green-tea processing plant, an industry that the government promoted following the closures.
Chang now earns about 2,400 yuan a month, 30 percent less than he did at the exhausting and dirty quarry job. It is a bittersweet turn of events, he said.
"The bad news is that my current salary is much less than before, but the good news is that I don't have to breathe dusty quarry air anymore."
Townships like Chaohe in Rizhao relied on stone quarries to expand their economy.
But the hundreds of quarries discharged polluting waste into the rivers, threatening the safety of the city's drinking water.
"Some stone quarries have destroyed the mountains' ecology, threatening wildlife and agriculture," the government said in a statement this year.
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