Wang Enhui, a farmer in Central China's Henan Province, was caught
in a dilemma.
The old man badly needed hands to help with wheat harvesting, but
could not call back his son, a migrant worker in Guangzhou which
was hit by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
Finally, the village authorities promised to send a task force
armed with combine harvesters to help Wang and his peers, who also
have family members working in SARS-affected urban areas.
The Wangs are among the thousands of farming households in China's
villages that are engaged in a massive drive to ward off the often
deadly epidemic from rural areas.
Authorities in east China's Anhui Province - which has 6 million
farmers seeking fortunes far from home - are also organizing teams
of tractors and harvesters to help with farming work, so that
migrant workers can stay in their host cities.
"The odds are high that migrant workers could transfer the viral
disease into rural regions from cities," said Li Hong, with the
Ministry of Labor and Social Security.
Yang Zhiyong, an official with the Department of Public Health of
central China's Hunan Province, yesterday confirmed that all six
SARS cases in his province were migrant rural workers from south
China's Guangdong Province.
While one died, the rest had recovered and been discharged from
hospitals, he said.
In
Beijing, nine cases of SARS among farmers living in villages in the
capital's suburbs were confirmed last week.
While city health officials have so far not revealed the proportion
of migrant workers among Beijing's SARS cases, Rao Keqin, an
epidemic information analysis expert from the national SARS
prevention and control group, said on Monday that the rate has
risen.
To
help prevent the lung infection spreading from the capital to rural
areas, Beijing in late April required that all migrant workers stay
where they are.
But the policy changed on Monday, with migrant workers who passed
medical checks being given the green light to enter or leave the
city, according to Wang Lichen, deputy director of Beijing
Construction Commission.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Security yesterday issued an
urgent notice, telling enterprises employing farmers to improve
their working and living conditions.
Under no circumstances could businesses fire SARS-infected migrant
workers or suspected cases, or send them back to their home towns,
said the notice.
(China Daily May 14, 2003)
