China to strengthen legal aid for migrant workers

BEIJING -- A regulation on guaranteeing the payment of wages to migrant workers will take effect on May 1, providing legal support to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese rural migrant workers.

In 2019, a total of over 490,000 legal aid cases involving 510,000 migrant workers were handled by legal aid agencies across the country, according to the Ministry of Justice.

The ministry opened a fast track to help tackle unpaid wages of migrant workers in May 2019, which had helped over 17,500 migrant workers to claim more than 27 million yuan (about 3.8 million U.S. dollars) in unpaid wages by the end of 2019.

To support the implementation of the regulation, the ministry has issued a guideline, calling on judicial administrative organs at all levels to give full play to the role of legal aid to effectively safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of migrant workers.