More Effort Needed for Migrant Workers to Achieve Full Coverage of Pension

China has vowed to achieve full coverage of its pension programs for urban and rural residents before 2013.

Experts point out that to achieve this goal more effort should be placed on ensuring pensions for migrant workers.

Wu Jia has more.

The pension program for urban residents is set to be launched from the beginning of next month. It is expected to operate nationwide next year.

Gao Wenshu is a researcher on social security from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

He says the program is mainly targeted at unemployed urban residents, which would be the equivalent of about 12 percent of the population in urban areas.

"The current program only reaches employed residents in urban areas, with over 80 percent of them being covered. Under the new program, unemployed residents can enjoy their pension when they reach 60 years of age. They have to pay for part of the insurance and the rest will be subsidized by the government."

Gao Wenshu says that the pension program for rural residents was implemented on a trial basis in 2009, when the government started to subsidize a larger part of the payment.

Currently it covers over 30 percent of rural residents who can receive at least 55 yuan or over 8 U.S. dollars of pension payments per month, once they are over 60 years old.

The program is expected to be implemented nationwide over the following three years.

But the country's 240-million migrant workers are a special group who are not properly covered by either program, based on where they are registered.

According to Gao Wenshu, about 40 percent of them are employed in cities, while the rest are mostly self-employed.

"Under China's Labor Law and Social Insurance Law, employees are required to participate in the pension program. But neither of these laws singles out migrant workers, thus they are often neglected by their employers on purpose, because employers are required to pay 20 percent of employees' salary as their insurance payment. For those self-employed, many don't want to join the local program in their hometown, because they don't live there and might not go back anymore. They cannot join the program in urban areas neither, as they are registered as rural residents."

Gao Wenshu suggests that self-employed migrant workers should be included in the local program based on where they work, rather than where they are registered.

And they need stronger legal protection to ensure that they are covered by the program.

The expert stresses that the government should continue to improve the pension programs and raise insurance standards in line with the country's social and economic development, to ensure that more residents are willing to participate in the programs.

For CRI, this is Wu Jia.