Conference participants stressed that 10 practical issues of greatest concern for migrant workers should be solved with strenuous efforts. These include the default of their payments, the minimum wage level, labour contracts, work safety and hygienic conditions, protection of their rights and interests, employment guidance, skill and safety training, insurance, their children's rights to receive compulsory education in cities, family planning and health services.

It is believed that protection of migrant workers' rights and interests and their employment conditions will be improved when the above-mentioned work gets enhanced.

The issues concerning migrant workers are special social phenomena during China's modernization and urbanization process.

In the years of planned economy, farmers-turned city residents would be seen to by the government in terms of employment, housing, social security and their children's schooling.

But only a very few farmers got such opportunities. Farmers, as a whole, were tied to the land.

After the country adopted the reform and opening-up policy, farmers' right to choose a job expanded. They were able to work freely in rural industries or do jobs in cities and towns.

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