Chinese local governments and relevant departments are rolling out policies and measures to stabilize employment and help enterprises resume production in an orderly manner amid the current novel coronavirus epidemic.
Cities in east China’s Zhejiang province have implemented effective measures to help employees return to work. For instance, Yiwu announced that the government will pay for all the charter vehicles services for enterprises to bring their employees back to the workplace.
On Feb.18, Wuxing district of Huzhou, Zhejiang province chartered a plane to bring back 165 employees from southwest China’s Yunnan province. After arriving at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport, these employees were later sent to Huzhou by coaches dispatched by the district government.
“We have dispatched seven coaches to pick them up, and each one was equipped with epidemic prevention and control materials such as masks, forehead thermometers, and disinfectants. We also prepared food and water for them,” said Guo Shizhong, director of the human resources and social security bureau of Wuxing district.
Such heartwarming measures, including charter vehicles, flights and trains, have been employed in more and more regions across the country to help enterprises take employees back to work.
On Feb. 17, the first train chartered by southwest China’s Sichuan province to send its migrant workers to workplaces arrived at Hangzhou. The government of Hangzhou’s Yuhang district dispatched staff to pick them up. More such trains are expected to depart from Sichuan, one of the major sources of migrant workers.
Such one-stop services have effectively reduced the risk of cross-infection and traffic hazards that might be encountered by migrant workers who take high-frequency transfers on their inter-provincial trips to workplaces, thus guaranteeing human resources for enterprises to resume production.
By Feb. 19, Sichuan had chartered 571 vehicles, 2 flights, and 4 trains, sending 21,612 migrant workers in the province to their workplaces. It is learnt that over 2.3 million migrant workers from Sichuan had returned to the places where they work.
To help the enterprises who are currently going through difficulties of labor shortage, local governments across China have formulated measures to stabilize employment. They established recruitment coordination platforms, and helped enterprises release online job information.
The National Xinjiang Zhundong Economic-Technological Development Park is located in the hinterland of Gobi Desert in Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Around 40,000 employees working there who went home for family reunion before the Spring Festival holiday were not able to go back to work on time because of the epidemic, which posed a serious challenge for the development park’s production.
To cope with this situation, the development park set up a steering group – a skeleton crew consisting 42 professionals and technicians in coal power, coal mine, chemical engineering and security industries, so as to make coordinated production plans and offer technical consultation for enterprises there. The group has effectively made up the weakness of labor shortage, and guaranteed epidemic prevention and work resumption at the same time.
To help guarantee employment for enterprises amid the epidemic, Huangpu district, Guangzhou, capital of south China’s Guangdong province has taken online all of its job fairs.
By enhancing the frequency and expanding the coverage of recruitment information and carrying out online written tests and interviews, the district has helped enterprises locating candidates in a rapid manner.
By Feb. 19, the human resources and social security bureau of Huangpu district had released more than 10,000 pieces of recruitment information for 177 companies through 8 online recruitment activities, and helped recruit over 1,700 employees for 21 out of the district’s top 100 enterprises.
In an effort to help enterprises tide over the difficult time, local governments across China have also rolled out policies to lower enterprises’ energy cost, reduce or exempt rent, and offer subsidies for stabilizing employment.
Northeast China’s Liaoning province recently formulated 25 measures that offer interest discount and rent cuts, in a bid to have small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play their due role in epidemic prevention and control, ensure healthy operation, and realize stable development.
The China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China, among others, have provided low-interest loans to relieve the burden of enterprises, said an executive of Northeast Pharm, a pharmaceutical group in Liaoning province.
“Our corporation is expected to get 2.5 million yuan ($355,500) of subsidies for stabilizing employment,” said the executive.
A large number of state-owned incubators in Shanghai have decided to exempt and reduce rent for enterprises. They formulated exemption plans after thorough investigation, and over 200 million yuan is expected to be saved for enterprises.
