China rural cops to bust migrant crime in cities

BEIJING, Aug 21 (Reuters) Chinese cities are drafting in rural police to tackle crime as millions of under-employed rural workers seeking better prospects migrate to urban areas.

The China Daily reported today that the police ministry would also establish a database to keep tabs on the country's massive pool of ''temporary'' resident workers in cities by 2009.

China's economic boom has largely been driven by the surplus of cheap labour flooding into cities to work on construction sites and infrastructure projects, but their presence has also stoked fears of rising crime and an emerging urban underclass.

''Although migrant workers are an irreplaceable force in the country's modernisation, they have also caused public security problems,'' the China Daily said, citing police figures that said they accounted for 41 per cent of people detained in criminal cases last year.

Liu Jinguo, a vice minister of the ministry of public security, said police from rural areas would be posted in city police stations ''in regions where floating population crime is pronounced'', the Beijing News reported.

China dubs its 150 million surplus rural workers migrating across the country to find work the ''floating population''.

Its treatment of migrant workers has come under international scrutiny after rights groups accused Beijing of clearing neighbourhoods and forced evictions as part of urban renewal for the 2008 Olympics.

Rights groups regularly accuse China of not doing enough to protect migrant workers, whose status as rural residents often denies them basic benefits such as health care and education in their adopted cities.

But Beijing says the problem is complex and says controls on population growth are needed to ease strained infrastructure and guarantee water supplies in many cities.

The rural police scheme has been piloted in a city in the eastern province of Jiangsu and will be rolled out to major cities with major migrant worker populations, the Beijing News said.

Chinese police often travel long distances to handle crimes by home-town offenders, not least to drag off some of the thousands of protesters that make their way to Beijing each year to petition the central government after failing to get redress at local levels.

REUTERS SV RAI1033